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rhe Neutrality of the United 

States in Relation to the British 

and German Empires 



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BY 

J. SHIELD NICHOLSON 
Sc.D., LL.D., F.B.A. 

Professor of Political Economy in the University of Edinburgh 
Author of ^' A Project of Empire " 



MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED 

ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 

1915 

Price Sixpence 



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THE NEUTRALITY OF THE UNITED 
STATES IN RELATION TO THE 
^ BRITISH AND GERMAN EMPIRES 

PREFACE 

Some time ago I was asked to write a pamphlet 
showing that tlie interests of the United States were 
bound up with the maintenance of the British Empire 
against German aggression. The inquiry was of 
necessity complex, and involved a balancing of 
different considerations. The general results are set 
forth in the following pages. 

The first difficulty was to determine the meaning 
of national interests. From the outbreak of the 
war some disappointment has been felt in this 
country in the fact that the sympathies of neutral 
countries, especially of the United States, have not 
found a more forcible expression in our favour. This 
disappointment is largely due to a want of appreci- 
ation of the difference between national interests and 
national sympathies. In the decision between peace 
and war, nations are guided not by sympathies but 
by interests. Happy is the nation where the two 
coincide ! 

Who can doubt that the sympathies of all the 
Balkan States are with Britain as against Turkey ? 
And yet it is even now doubtful if Greece, Bulgaria, 
or Roumania will intervene in the war, and if so, on 
which side. Each of these nations has fran! 
declared that she must be guided by her own interest^ 



on 



ii PREFACE 

British policy is no exception to the general rule, 
and the President of the United States has only 
followed the British tradition in giving the first 
consideration to the interests of his own country. 

Whether the pursuit of national interests in any 
case is to be condemned or approved by the rest of 
the world depends on the real nature of the interests 
and the methods by which they are promoted. 

The plan of the argument is to make a comparison 
of British with German interests, and, so to speak, 
to invite the United States to choose between the 
two pictures. The presentation of the case is as far 
as possible judicial, although with the best inten- 
tions it is very difficult to give in English an 
appearance of reasonableness to the more exalted 
forms of German military culture. Some kinds of 
thought seem to find appropriate expression only in 
the polysyllables and breathless sentences of the 
German tongue. 

The problems here considered are not like a set of 
chess problems in which one answer is right and all 
the others wrong. The purpose of the inquiry will 
have been attained if it should assist in some degree 
in confirming the good relations that subsist, owing 
to the community of ideals, between the United 
States and the British Empire. 

J. SHIELD NICHOLSON. 

University of Edinburgh, 
August 2nd, 1915. 

Note. — The general conclusions of the last two chapters were 
published in two articles in the Scotsman of June 9th and 12th. 




CONTENTS 



CHAPTER 1. 

NATIONAIi INTERESTS AND NATIONAL SYMPATHIES. 

TAOK 

National interests and symj^atliies distingnished — The Presi- 
dent's silence on sympatliies — -The silent diplomatic 
" or " — Interests and syixipathies of other neutrals — ■ 
British policy and British interests — The opinion of 
The Times 1— 11 

CHAPTER II. 

BRITISH COMMERCIAL INTERESTS. 

British foreign policy not mainly commercial — No jealousy 
of expansion of German trade — Relation of national 
power to wealth — Adana Smith's opinion of the mer- 
cantile classes and of colonies — His project of empire — 
British Free Trade and German expansion — The German 
menace to the British Empire — The war not a Trade 
war but an Empire war ... ... ... ... 12 — 27 

CHAPTER III. 

NON -COMMERCIAL INTERESTS. 

The greatest British interest is liberty — The greatest 
happiness principle in relation to liberty — Different forms 
of liberty — British treatment of aliens — Liberty and 
literature — Milton — Liberty and Empire — Liberty and 
small nations, and of diverse races and religions — 
Variety of British alliances — Fidelity to treaties — Note 
on the Morality of the observance of Treaties ... 28 — 43 

CHAPTER IV. 

GERMAN NATIONAL INTERESTS. 1. COMMERCIAL INTERESTS. 

German ruling idea pi'edominance of state control — Germans 
a nation of theorists — Influence of The National System. 
of Lisi— German commercial policy based on tliis book 
— List advocated for Germany the old Briti.ih com- 
mercial policy — ManufactiU'ing power and naval power 
— List's Pan-Germanism — Holland a German province — 
Belgium and Switzerland to be included in German 
Empire — ^Economic progress of Germany subordinated 
to military needs — German ideas of Australasian 
colonies — Turkey^ — Asia — Germany overlooked the real 
forces in the expansion of the British Empire ... 44^57 



iv CONTENTS 

CHAPTER V. 

GERMAN NATIONAL INTERESTS. II. MILITARISM. 

PAfJE 

German Empire the expansion of Prussia — Militarism and 
Frederick the Great — Alfieri — Mihtarism as explained 
by Mr. von Mach for the Americans, and by Professor 
Sombart for the Germans — Contrast — The Kaiser's straw 
hat — The prince of peace — Traders and Heroes — In 
Germany every tiling military enjoys precedence — A 
nation of warriors — Militarism as " German heroism 
made visible " — " War a holy thing, the holiest thing 
on earth " — The German steel-clad Colossus^Relation 
of steel-clad Germany to other nations — Germans bad 
colonisers because German culture cannot be transported 
— Germans the chosen people now as formerly the Jews 
and Greeks — Representative of God's thought on earth 
— The wretched book of the aged Kant on Everlastimf 
Peace 58—71 

CHAPTER VI. 

IMMEDIATE INTERESTS OF THE UNITED STATES. 

Immediate interest strict neutrality — Composite character of 
the people — Ties with belligerents — American horror of 
war — Commercial and financial gains of neutrality — 
United States the champion of neutral rights — Non-inter- 
ventionist — Difficulty of position — International law 
only morality — No international sanctions — United 
States cannot be general judge and policeman — Case of 
Belgivun — United States as champion neutral ought to 
conserve its own neutral rights most strictly — Canning 
quoted on duty and interests — National policy must 
not be pm-ely oi^portunist — United States not governed 
solely by monetary interests — Reference to the Civil 
War* ' * 72—81 

CHAPTER VII. 

THE ULTERIOR INTERESTS OF THE UNITED STATES. 

American opinion and German military cultiu-e — " War is 
war "^ — The great ideas which dominate British civilisa- 
tion still stronger in the United States — Stronger contrast 
with German ideals — The hereditary princijale — Consti- 
tutional government — Equality before the law — Liberty, 
justice, and humanity — In all essentials American and 
British ideals coincide and are opposed to German military 
ideas. Marinismus and Militarismus — United States 
cannot live in isolation — Duty to herself and duty to 
other nations — Conclusion ... ... ... ... 82 — 92 



THE NEUTRALITY OF THE UNITED 

STATES IN RELATION TO THE 

BRITISH AND GERMAN EMPIRES 

CHAPTER I 

NATIONAL INTERESTS AND NATIONAL SYMPATHIES 

The distinction between national interests and 
national sympathies is always of vital importance 
in balancing the issues of peace and war. Yet the 
distinction is very commonly ignored. The attacks 
made on the President of the United States on 
account of his patience are largely due to the failure 
to grasp this distinction. 

The President, on the other hand, owing partly 
to his lifelong academic training, has perhaps been 
inclined to emphasise the distinction over-sharply. 
He has persistently refrained from expressing in 
an official form the national sympathies because 
he did not wish to prejudice the national interests. 
With regard to the belligerent countries he has 
assumed the attitude of the impartial spectator. 
His mind is full of political science, theoretical and 
applied. Of the theory _and the history of political 



2 THE NEUTRALITY OF THE UNITED STATES IN 

science Mr. Woodrow Wilson knows more than all 
the other rulers of the world put together, if their 
learning could be tested in the old Chinese examination 
boxes by the most searching of celestial examiners. 
Mr. Wilson's best known work, The State, Elements 
of Historical and Practical Politics, is a standard 
university text-book in all English-speaking countries. 
For five and twenty years (1885-1910) he was engaged 
in academic work, being in succession first Professor 
of Political Economy, then of Jurisprudence and 
Political Science, and finally Principal of his old 
University. Against this academic life he has to 
set two years as Governor of New Jersey (1911-13). 

This life-long immersion in the academic treatment 
of politics considered as a preparation for the head 
of the greatest neutral state in the world-wide war, 
was likely to be productive of one very great merit 
and one very grave defect. The very great merit 
is infinite patience in looking at a case on all sides. 
Of Mr. Wilson's patience and impartiality as an 
examiner there can be no Cjuestion. He himself 
is so reasonable and impartial that he wants to make 
all the people in the United States equally open- 
minded and patient. 

The people of the United States are a susceptible 
people, but no nation need take offence at being 
compared to Christian in the Pilgrim's Progress. 
The best of nations wants to get rid of its burden, 
and to find in some way eternal glory. The horror 
of this war is oppressive. Surely a great nation 
can do something to put a stop to it. The nation 
wants to run like Christian to get rid of its burden. 



RELATION TO BRITISH AND GERMAN EMPIRES 3 

In his journey Christian came to the House of the 
Interpreter, where he was told he would be shown 
many excellent things. 

Here is one : "I saw moreover in my Dream, 
that the Interpreter took him by the hand, and had 
him into a little room ; where sat two little children, 
each one in his Chair : The name of the eldest was 
Passion, and of the other Patience ; Passion seemed 
to be much discontent, but Patience was very quiet. 
Then Christian asked, What is the reason of the 
discontent of Passion ? The Interpreter answered. 
The Governour of them would have him stay 
for his best things till the beginning of next year ; 
but he will have all now ; but Patience is willing 
to wait." This is the parable that the Interpreter 
of the White House tells his people in their progress 
to a better world : Patience not Passion must be 
their model. 

But academic training is liable to beget not only 
the very great merit of patience, but the very grave 
demerit of indecision. The devastation of Belgium 
raised in the United States an outburst of moral 
indignation which seemed to be the natural fore- 
runner of intervention, or at least indignant official 
protest. But the President sat still in his judicial 
seat. He was content with saying that judgment 
was deferred. People began to ask : How long will 
you abuse our patience, Mr. President ? Will you 
never move ? If the German Professors were as mad 
as March hares their own Professorial President 
seemed to the more restless ones as slow as an old 
tortoise. If ex-President Roosevelt did not use this 



4 THE NEUTRALITY OF THE UNITED STATES IN 

similitude about his successor it was only because 
he did not think of it. 

These strictures on Mr. Wilson's patience arose 
from the failure to grasp the distinction between 
national interests and national sympathies. 

Mr. Wilson is clearly of opinion that the first duty 
of the President is to interpret the interest of his 
own country ; and that it is only a secondary duty 
to voice the sympathies of the nation or of himself 
with the moral conduct or political aims of the 
belligerents except so far as American interests are 
concerned. Apparently he supposed that the ex- 
pression of sympathies might safely be left to the 
press and the irresponsible " who's whos " who 
write to the papers. Not that he was indifferent 
to the national sympathies or indifferent to the 
sufferings caused by the war. Not that he thought 
that on no occasion should the President express 
any moral judgment on the conduct of the war, 
as the sequel plainly showed. But in plain English 
he thought, " least said soonest mended," especially 
having regard to the composite character of the United 
States population, and their divergent sympathies. 

This apparent want of firmness and decision in 
upholding international law was, in fact, capable of 
quite a different interpretation. By making a sharp 
distinction between intei'ests and sympathies the 
President would be able to act with so much more 
vigour in case any real interest were involved, as 
again the sequel showed. 

What, then, is the nature and bearing of this dis- 
tinction between interests and sympathies ? 



RELATION TO BRITISH AND GERMAN EMPIRES 5 

That the distinction is very real is seen at once 
from the difference in the mere words in which the 
interests and the sympathies find utterance. The 
hxnguage of interests is the kmguage of diplomacy, 
which always means a good deal more than it says, 
and leaves a good deal to be inferred. Here is an 
example : 

" When we say in that dispatch we are ' satisfied ' 
that those conditions will be observed, is it not 
obvious that we use a language of courtesy which 
is always most becomingly employed between inde- 
pendent powers ? Who does not know that in diplo- 
matic correspondence under the suavity of expres- 
sion is implied an ' or ' which imports another 
alternative ? " ^ 

The silent diplomatic ' or ' is more eft'ective than 
reams of rhetoric. 

British diplomacy has always excelled in this 
suavity, as is frankly acknowledged by its enemies. 
Says Mr. von Mach : - " The British State papers are 
always well written . . . they are written not only 
for the benefit of the recipient, but also for the world 
at large. If Germany and Austria woidd follow 
this example they would meet less opposition in 
foreign countries. It is not so much what they do as 
the way they do it that oft'ends people." 

Bismarck was the exception that proves the rule. 
His successors in the art of the new diplomacy have 
not done well. The present Chancellor spoilt all 

^ Canning : Speech on Negotiations relative to Spain. April, 
1823. 

^ What Germamj Wants, p. 75. Bostoia, 1914. 



6 THE NEUTRALITY OF THE UNITED STATES IN 

by his famous "scrap of paper " and his pubhc 
statement that the violation of Belgian territory 
by Germany was " against the rules of international 
law." 

Compared with the official expression of interests 
by the older diplomacy, the unofficial expression of 
sympathies is as thunder unto silence. Could there 
be any stronger contrast than between the official 
Notes of the United States on the Lusitania and the 
unofficial language of the press ? Mr. Wilson has 
followed the old tradition of suavity. In the second 
Lusitania Note (June 10th) there is a delightful example 
of the silent diplomatic " or." After " very earnestly 
very solemnly " renewing the representations of the 
Note of May 15th, the second Note concludes : 

" The Government of the United States does not 
understand the Imperial German Government to 
question these rights. It understands it also to 
accept as established beyond question the principle 
that the lives of non-combatants cannot lawfully 
be put in jeopardy by the capture or destruction 
of an unresisting merchantman, and to recognise 
the obligation to take sufficient precaution to 
ascertain whether a suspected merchantman is of 
fact of a belligerent nationality, or is of fact carrying 
contraband under a neutral flag." 

What if Germany does question these rights ? 
Perhaps Mr. Bryan rightly divined it meant war. 

When we look beneath the surface to the ideas 
the words stand for we observe that, whilst national 
interests are limited by practical possibilities, the 
range of national sympathies is unbounded so long 



RELATION TO BRITISH AND CxERMAN EMPIRES 7 

as the freedom of the press is maintained. The first 
duty of the head of a responsible Government is to 
consider how far national aspirations are capable of 
realisation. It is true that he must consider not only 
the present interest but the future ; but the future 
which he considers must still be within the range of 
the practical, and not in the shifting cloudland of the 
ideal. The ancient Persians used to teach their 
boys to shoot strongly by aiming at the sun, but the 
statesman who is always aiming at the sun is likely 
to have his eyes dazzled for less exalted targets. 

With the exponent of national sympathies it is 
otherwise. It may be his first duty to arouse the 
national conscience regardless of practicality, and 
not only to lay stress on the common virtues and 
sensibilities but on the finer commands of chivalry 
and honour. But it is one thing to enforce a high 
standard at home by purifying or exalting public 
opinion, and quite another to try to enforce the same 
standard by force of arms or the threat thereof in 
the rest of the world or in some j)articular independent 
state. Whether we like it or not, knight errantry 
as a policy for nations, if it ever existed, has passed 
away. The religion of humanity is not strong enough 
to breed Crusaders. In the issues of peace and war 
every nation looks to its own interests as inter- 
preted by its responsible or recognised Government. 

The attitude of the other neutral nations (apart 
from the United States) reveals this distinction be- 
tween interests and sympathies in the most marked 
manner. Who would have supposed, having regard 
to the history and the sympathies of Greece, that 

B* 2 



8 THE NEUTRALITY OF THE UNITED STATES IN 

she would not at once have rushed to support 
England against Turkey ? Who would have supposed 
that month after month Italy could have refrained 
from joining England in the war against Austria ? 
The sympathies of Holland were stirred to the depths 
by the forced incursion of thousands of refugees from 
Belgium ; she must have known that the architects 
of Greater Germany always classed Belgium and 
Holland together, and yet Holland clung to her 
neutrality. The list of illustrations need not be 
further extended. We know from the testimony of the 
Germans that they know that the sympathies 
of the whole world are against them. They cannot 
understand it. In some cases they are even amazed 
at the want of sympathy with their cause and their 
culture. They admit the want of sympathies, but 
they hope for a counterpoise in interests. At the 
worst they suppose that the fears of the lesser neutrals 
will paralyse action. That is the logic of their fright- 
fulness. 

The people of the United Kingdom who are inclined 
to think that British policy is the exception to the 
rule and is always and pre-eminently disinterested 
should recall their own history and the many occasions 
even in recent years in which British moral indignation 
has not been followed by military intervention ; 
and in which it has been recognised that official 
protests not backed by the real threat of war are 
often worse than useless. The end of last July 
revealed Sir Edward Grey as one of the strongest 
statesmen of history. Yet how many times had 
that same strong man declined to meddle with the 



RELATION TO BRITISH AND GERMAN EMPIRES 9 

affairs of other nations in spite of moral indignation 
and apparent diplomatic opportunity ? 

The article in The Times of March 8th, 
which created so much indignation amongst those 
who like to think that British foreign policy is solely 
dictated by altruistic chivalry, was very near the 
truth " which often thought was ne'er so ill ex- 
pressed." " We keep our word," said The Times, 
" when we have given it, but we do not give it without 
solid practical reasons, and we do not set up to be 
international Don Quixotes, ready at all times to 
redress the wrongs that do us no hurt. . . . We 
reverted to our historical policy of the balance of 
power, and we reverted to it for the reasons for 
which our forefathers adopted it. They were not 
either for them or us reasons of sentiment. They 
were self-regarding and even selfish reasons. . . . 
When we subsidised every state in Germany and 
practically in all Europe in the Great War, we did 
not lavish our gold from love of German or Austrian 
liberty or out of sheer altruism. No : we invested 
it for our own safety and our own advantage, and 
on the whole our commitments were rewarded l^y 
an adequate return." Litera scripta manet. Wliat 
The Times has said, perhaps under the spell of too 
much reading of the wisdom of Bismarck, has been 
said before in the language of the older diplomacy 
by all our strongest statesmen since England was a 
nation and not the name of part of an island. 

In 1848 Lord Palmerston concluded a speech on 
the Polish question with these words : "If I might 
be allowed to express in one sentence the principle 



TO THE NEUTRALITY OF THE UNITED STATES IN 

which I think ought to guide an Enghsh Minister, I 
would adopt the expression of Canning, and say that 
with every British Minister the interests of England 
ought to be the shibboleth of his policy." Taken 
without its context this opinion may well seem to be 
one of unscrupulous selfishness, and such also appeared 
to be the argument of The Times. The article was 
published at a time when British public opinion 
happened to be on the crest of a wave of altruism ; 
not the cheap altruism of words, but the costly 
altruism of spending blood and treasure for the 
benefit, as it seemed, of other nations. The Times 
said the right thing at the wrong time. The truth 
it was concerned to preach out of season was appa- 
rently in direct opposition to facts : we were fighting 
(so we all believed) for Belgium and for Europe ; 
this time at any rate we thought the stamp on the 
gold was of more worth than the gold itself — -St. 
George and the Dragon was a fitting symbol of 
England crushing Germany. The Times told the 
truth, but in such a way and at such a time that it 
had the semblance of an untruth. For once the 
writer had forgotten his Dante : " Always to that 
truth that has an air of falsehood a man should close 
his lips if possible, for though he be blameless he 
incurs reproach." 

But it will be asked, If The Times is right, what be- 
comes of our championship of small nations ? What 
of our wrath over the " scrap of paper " I Have we 
really got down to inconvertible notes not only in our 
currency but in our policy ? Is the redemption to 
be suspended so long as it suits our interests I 



RELATION TO BRITISH AND GERMAN EMPIRES ii 

By no means, but everything turns on the inter- 
pretation of our own interests and our own advantage. 

Our most real interest is not to be measured in 
terms of money or in the magnitude of foreign trade. 
Our most real interest is to maintain those principles 
and ideas on which the British Empire has been built 
up : of such are liberty, humanity, and fidelity to 
agreements. 

And to anticipate the moral of the argument, so 
it is with the United States. If the United States 
should be forced to go to war with Germany, it will 
be to lose the money but to save the soul of the nation. 

Germany thought England would not go to war 
because war is so expensive ; and in spite of the rude 
awakening in that case the same false reasoning is 
applied to the United States. 



CHAPTER II 

BRITISH COMMERCIAL INTERESTS 

The argument of this chapter may seem to belie 
its title, for the intention is to show that British 
foreign policy has not been mainly guided by commer- 
cial interests ; that in every period there are other 
interests which in case of conflict have the superior 
claim. What these other interests are is the problem 
of the next chapter. The present is in the main 
negative. 

By way of preparation the general proposition may 
be advanced that in every great country other than 
economic considerations must be taken account of, 
and of economic considerations those arising from 
foreign trade are only part. 

It is pleasantly observed by Professor Irving Fisher^ 
tliat the total exports and imports of the United 
States amount only to a paltry three billions as com- 
pared with a total national trade of 387 billions ; 
that is to say, the foreign trade, exports and imports 
together, is less than one per cent, of the total. 

The present writer may observe that in the year 

^ The Purchasmg Power of Aloney, p. 300. New York, 1911. 

12 



THE NEUTRALITY OF THE UNITED STATES 13 

before the war the exports of the United States to 
the United Kingdom and Canada were three times as 
great in value as the exports to Germany. 

Are we then to conchide that the United States 
must take no risk about a paltry three billions of 
trade, and if she does intervene that she must, as good 
business, support the customer who is more than 
three times as big as his enemy ? By no means. 
The United States has other interests not to be 
measured in terms of foreign trade. So also has 
the British Empire. 

In Germany, however, before the war the opinion 
prevailed not only that British policy was dominated 
solely by British interests, but that British interests 
were, as they always had been, mainly commercial, 
and that the chief commercial interest was the 
development of foreign trade. 

It was also supposed that now as always in the 
development of foreign trade Britain had aimed at 
an exclusive monopoly and looked to her own advance- 
ment by the depression of other nations. , 

According to this view British hostility to Germany 
was due to jealousy of the rapid growth of German 
foreign trade. "In Germany the feehng grew that 
England wished to destroy the world markets of her 
rival, and history seemed to bear this out, for had 
not England, destroyed or attached to herself in turn 
the great world commerce of Spain, Portugal, France, 
Holland, and the United States ? The merchant 
marines of all these nations had fallen a prey to 
England because in the hour of need they had not been 
defended by a suflliciently large navy. It was there- 



14 THE NEUTRALITY OF THE UNITED STATES IN 

fore the duty of Germany to build a navy, not for 
the sake of aggression, but to defend her world 
commerce if England should find an opportune 
moment of attack. This was Germany's view of 
the case." ^ 

In an inquiry concerned with the question of the 
neutrality of the United States in the present war 
it would obviously be out of proportion to examine 
in detail this doubtful compendium of the history 
of British policy as regards foreign trade and the part 
played therein by the British navy. But without 
going too far afield it is worth while clearing away 
the prejudice aroused by this account of British aims 
in the past and the present. 

The idea that British foreign policy has been 
mainly directed to the development of an exclusive 
foreign trade is not true of any period of British 
history ; and it is specially untrue of the period 
that has witnessed the formation and the growth of 
the present German Empire. 

Even in medieval times, from the first recognition 
of national interests, the idea of wealth was sub- 
ordinated to the idea of national power. Very 
early the power of the sea was regarded as the chief 
safeguard of national power. " The English rulers 
were forced to recognise in the earliest times that 
not only trade but also the power of defence and 
offence lay in the moving keel." - Trade followed 
the flag, but the flag was not moved about simply 
to mark out claims for trade. 

1 Von iNIach, op. cit. p. 55. 

- Schanz : Englische Handelspolitik, Vol. I, p. 352. 



RELATION TO BRITISH AND GERMAN EMPIRES 15 

The old mercantile system — ^the name which covered 
the varied ideas that governed the commercial 
policy of England during the seventeenth and eight- 
eenth centuries — had for its fundamental principle 
national power. Those trades and industries were most 
encouraged which were supposed to promote most 
the national power. Treasure was an aid to power. 
Foreign trade was an aid to treasure. Therefore 
a favourable balance of trade was favourable to 
the growth of national power. In the same way 
trade was discouraged with our " natural enemies/' 
of whom France was the chief. It did not need 
the genius of Adam Smith to discover that trade 
with a near and wealthy country like France was 
of more advantage than trade with a poorer and 
more distant country, e.g., Portugal ; but the natural 
enmity to France prevailed. That notable book, 
Seeley's Expmision of England, had for its main 
argument that the great wars from the end of the 
seventeenth century to the beginning of the nine- 
teenth were foreign trade wars. Incidentally, no 
doubt, they were wars for trade, but the main 
idea was not simply trade. Consciously or uncon- 
sciously, there was a continuous striving for the 
expansion of empire. One of the motives to the 
expansion of Empire was no doubt the expansion 
of foreign trade, but that was only one motive, and 
not always the most important. Nor was it so much 
the magnitude or the profit of the foreign trade 
that was considered as the national advantage, 
and the advantage was not measured simply by the 
money value. In particular those kinds of trade 



i6 THE NEUTRALITY OF THE UNITED STATES IN 

were most approved which most led to the develop- 
ment of shipping, including both shipbuilding^ and 
navigation. - 

Whether this policy was moral or immoral according 
to our present national standards, or whether on 
the whole it promoted better than any other policy 
would have done the development of foreign trade, is 
not now the point. The question is : What was the 
dominating aim of our commercial policy during 
this first period of expansion — before 1776 ? Was 
it to use our navy and our sea-power to increase 
trade and wealth, or was it to manage our trade and 
wealth so as to increase the national power ? 

No doubt to some extent, and especially under 
certain conditions, the promotion of wealth and of 
power are achieved l)y the same policy, but in other 
cases the promotion of power is at the expense of 
opulence and conversely. The point is that in the 
history of England when there was a conflict of the 
two aims national power was preferred. Wealth 
was approved especially as a means to power. 

Sometimes, no doubt, the guidance of the govern- 
ment of the state fell into the hands of the mercantile 
classes, and then they tried to make power subservient 
to wealth and in particular to foreign trade. But in 
time the mercantile classes were put back in their 
proper place, and they were made to see that the 
interests of the nation were not only mercantile. 

This mode of stating the relations of wealth to 
power is at the present time supposed to be altogether 

' Cf. The bounties on sliipbuilding materials. 

- Cf. The Navigation Acts. See below, pp. 17, 20, 23. | 



RELATION TO BRITISH AND GERMAN EMPIRES 17 

against the traditions of English pohtical economy ; 
though since the war began and made such slow 
progress the idea of national power has come more 
and more into its old authoritv. But if we go back 
to xA-dam Smith — who, in the matter of wisdom 
bearing on the present situation is probably worth 
more than all the other economists put together 
(including the CTcrmans) — we find that his main 
attack was directed against those who thought 
(and schemed) that the power of the state should 
be used mainly to advance the interests of foreign 
trade. 

The question may be made more definite by 
reference to the Navigation Acts.^ For centuries 
before Adam Smith wrote the policy embodied in 
these Acts had only been modified to be strengthened. 
What that policy was, and what its place in the 
scheme of things national, was stated in the clearest 
terms by Adam Smith. '" The Act of Navigation 
is not favourable to foreign commerce or to the 
growth of that opulence which can arise from it. 
. , . As defence is, however, of much more im- 
portance than opulence, the Act of Navigation is 
perhaps the wisest of all the commercial regulations 
of England." On his view trade ought to be the 
servant of the national power, and not the national 
power the servant of trade. 

It is true that the mercantile classes in their 
own interests had often tried to invert the proposition, 

^ The main idea of these Acts was to force English (and 
Colonial) trade to be carried on m English sliips with EngUsh 
crews. Restrictions were imposed also on the carrying trade of 
other nations. 



i8 THE NEUTRALITY OF THE UNITED STATES IN 

and to make power the servant of trade. What 
Adam Smith thought of such an inversion is abun- 
dantly clear not only from the general course of the 
argument but from the passionate attacks which he 
made on " the mean rapacity, the monopolising 
spirit of the merchants and manufacturers who 
neither are nor ought to be the rulers of mankind." 
The wisdom of the following passage may be revived 
for present use. " The interest of the dealers in 
any particular branch of trade or manufacture is 
always in some respects different and even opposite 
to that of the public. . . , The proposal of any 
new law or regulation of commerce which comes 
from this order ought always to be listened to with 
great precaution, and ought never to be adopted 
till after having been long and carefully examined, 
not only with the most scrupulous, but with the 
most suspicious attention." 

The opposition that may arise between national 
and mercantile interests is brought out still more 
clearly in Adam Smith's examination of the effects 
of the old monopoly of the colonial trade. Again 
we are not concerned with the validity of the argu- 
ment, but only with the ideas which the course of 
the argument shows were dominant and unquestioned 
at the time. 

Adam Smith after an elaborate inquiry into facts 
and history shows, at any rate to his own satisfaction, 
that " under the present system (1776 — the year of 
the Declaration of American Independence) of man- 
agement Great Britain derives nothing but loss from 
the dominion which she assumes over her colonies." 



RELATION TO BRITISH AND GERMAN EMPIRES 19 

Does lie therefore argue that the colonies should 
be set free and left to their own devices ? On the 
contrary : "To propose that Great Britain should 
voluntarily give up all authority over her colonies 
would be to propose such a measure as never was 
and never will be adopted by any nation in the 
world . . . The most visionary enthusiast would 
scarce be capable of proposing such a measure, at 
least with any serious hope of its ever being adopted." 

But if the British ideas were purely commercial, 
why should it seem so utterly absurd to cut the loss 
and give up the venture ? The truth is that the ideas 
at the basis of the British Empire were not purely 
commercial. Adam Smith argued that what a 
country ought to expect from colonies was an increase 
of military power pr of revenue or both. On his 
view the monopoly of the colonial trade (though 
advantageous to the merchants actually engaged in 
that trade) was not advantageous to the nation, 
even from the point of view of wealth. 

But, in his view, that was not all, nor the worst, 
to be said of the old colonial policy. It had failed 
to increase the national power — the colonies had 
become a source of weakness. Therefore — this is 
the conclusion of the whole Wealth of Nations — this 
" project of empire " ought to be converted into real 
empire. And the method he suggested was the 
method of imperial federation which we are just 
beginning to realise as a practical policy. He approved 
of the abolition of the monopoly of the colonial trade 
because he thought that this other method — which 
incidentallv involved free trade between the different 



20 THE NEUTRALITY OF THE UNITED STATES IN 

parts of the empire — would promote much better 
the fundamental ideas of empire. 

In this brief survey no attempt is made to take 
account of all the different modes in which the 
expansion of England was effected. The sole aim 
is to show that the dominating motive was not always 
the expansion of foreign trade or the increase of 
wealth. We did not give up dominion or extend 
dominion simply according to a money estimate of 
national gain. Why we did expand it and maintain 
it is a much more difficult question or series of 
questions, of the greatest historical interest — far too 
large for these pages. 

The separation of the American colonies in 1776 
was followed in the course of time not only by the 
complete abandonment of the monopoly of the 
colonial trade but by concessions to the colonies 
of such a degree of commercial freedom that in time 
they were allowed to impose protective duties against 
the mother country. For a time, no doubt, there 
was a system of nnitual preferences, but with the 
adoption of the policy of free trade by the United 
Kingdom, even the system of preferences was aban- 
doned. The seventy years from the American Inde- 
pendence to the repeal of the Corn Laws (1776-1846) 
was a period during which important steps were 
taken in the abolition of the restrictions on the trade 
with foreign nations. The Navigation Acts, the very 
part of the old system which Adam Smith had most 
approved, were repealed (except for a fragment), and 
gradually the idea began to prevail amongst the 
merchants and manufacturers that free trade would 



RELATION TO BRITISH AND GERMAN EMPIRES 21 

be to their advantage. As it happened, it also came 
to be supposed by the nation at large that free trade 
would best promote the national interests. 

Anyone who studies the actual history will see that 
according to the propounders of the policy {e.g., 
Cobden and Peel) we did not adopt the system 
simply out of love for other nations or lofty ideas of 
cosmopolitanism or any other feelings that require 
long Greek words for their expression, but because 
the majority of the nation thought free trade was 
to the advantage of the nation. We also supposed, 
it is true, that other nations would (in their own 
interests) follow our example, and that free trade 
would promote peace ; but these hopes were of 
secondary influence. 

In the sixty-eight years that followed the repeal 
of the Corn Laws to the outbreak of the present war 
(1846-1914) this policy of free trade and non- 
interference with the foreign trade of other nations 
had been carried to the height of its development. 

It ought not to be necessary to go over once more 
history already so well enforced not only in books 
but in recent and burning political controversy. 
Even now there are people alive in Great Britain 
who cannot speak of free trade and protection without 
getting into a passion and losing their senses and their 
manners. 

Fortunately for the present purpose all we are 
concerned with is the bare fact which no one can 
deny, namely, that this policy of free trade — what- 
ever its merits or defects — this policy of non-inter- 
ference with the trade of other nations, had reached 



22 THE NEUTRALITY OF THE UNITED STATES IN 

its most extreme form precisely in that period in 
which the expansion of Prussia into the German 
Empire has been accompHshed. Not only did this 
expansion of Prussia coincide with the complete 
abandonment of our old monopolising policy in 
foreign trade, but it was not opposed by Oreat 
Britain even on political grounds. Speaking of the war 
between Prussia and Austria in 1866, Lord Stanley, 
a Conservative Minister, said : " With regard to the 
possible results of the war, and especially as to the 
establishment of a strong North German power — of 
a strong, compact empire extending over North 
Germany — I cannot see that if the war ends as it 
possibly may in the establishment of such an empire, 
I cannot see that the existence of such a power would 
be to us any injury, any menace, any detriment." 

When the German Empire was an accompHshed 
fact after the war with France, the same friendliness 
was shown, and the same confidence that no British 
interests were menaced. As for any attempt to 
strangle the development of German trade our 
policy was ridiculously cosmopolitan and non-national. 
The General Election of 1906 showed that at the time 
the public opinion of the United Kingdom supported 
this policy by an overwhelming majority. Whether 
popular opinion was right or wrong is not the point. 
The point is that, with the genuine approval of this 
country, the British markets were as open to German 
as to British merchants. When this free trade 
policy was adopted by this country alone, and was 
derided by other countries, including Germany, it 



RELATION TO BRITISH AND GERMAN EMPIRES 23 

is folly to argue that we opposed the commercial 
expansion of Germany. Even when the German 
navy was so increased that to the wise, as the event 
showed, only one interpretation seemed possible, 
the nation and the Government ignored the warning. 
We seemed so fast asleep that Germany began to 
think we should never awake from our dogmatic 
free trade slumbers. How then can it be said that 
Britain was jealous of the expanding trade of Germany, 
and was preparing to crush Germany simply to pre- 
serve the British predominance in the markets of 
the world ? Britain had long ago given up the policy 
of trying to manage the w^orld's trade in her own 
interest. She had given up even the management 
of her own inter-imperial trade. The last remnant 
of the Navigation Acts had been repealed in 1850, 
and our tariff had become so free that we could make 
no commercial treaties because we had nothing to 
bargain with. To all the rest of the world our free 
trade policy seemed Quixotic. To Germany in 
particular, with its ideas of state power, our policy 
must have seemed sheer foolishness. Under these 
conditions, to say that the dominant aim of British 
policy was to use the command of the sea to promote 
British trade and to suppress the trade of other 
nations is too absurd to be reasoned against. 

With regard to our own markets we gave no 
privileges to the rest of the Empire that we did not 
give to foreign nations, and for a long period before 
the war our trade with foreign countries, as compared 
with inter-imperial trade, had been roughly in the 



24 THE NEUTRALITY OF THE UNITED STATES IN 

proportion of nearly three to one.^ Amongst foreign 
nations, both directly and indirectly, Germany had 
been the greatest gainer by onr free trade policy. 

In the meantime, however, whilst we had concurred 
in the loosening not only of commercial but of political 
ties with the principal colonies, which had indeed 
become self-governing dominions — whilst we had 
carried to an extreme never dreamed of by 
Adam Smith the ideas of free trade — silently 
and as unnoticed as seeds in the earth the imperial 
ideas sown by Adam Smith began to grow. Without 
metaphor, the necessary minimum for the conversion 
of our " project of empire," into a reality began to 
be recognised. The self-governing dominions began 
to feel their way towards closer union and to realise 
the necessity of more adequate provision for imperial 
defence — defence against Germany. 

The German menace to British trade was nothing, 
but the German menace to the British Empire 
was everything. By the persistent growth of the 
German Navy, British imperial interests were threat- 
ened that could not be measured in terms of trade 
or even in terms of money. Wealth was only one 
element in national well-being, and defence more than 
ever was of more importance than opulence. 

Does anyone suppose that on the outbreak of war 
the magnificent response of every part of the Empire 
to the call of the mother country was made because 
the trade of the British Isles was threatened or 

^ In 1913 ihe total exports and imports of the United Kingdom 
exceeded £1,400,000,000, of whieli less than £400,000,000 was 
inter-imperial. 



RELATION TO BRITISH AND GERMAN EMPIRES 25 

because the proportion of Germany in the world's 
trade was rising as compared with that of the United 
Kingdom ? 

Is this greatest of wars, in which milHons of the 
finest manhood of the world have been destroyed, 
simply a war engineered by the supporters of British 
foreign trade against the commercial expansion of 
Germany ? To put the question is to reduce the 
supposition to absurdity. 

From our point of view the war is not a trade 
war, but an Empire war : the British Empire 
against the German Empire. We have no desire 
to add to our territory, for the simple reason 
that already it is more than enough ; but we 
shall not willingly suffer any part of our Empire 
to be subjected to Germany. The idea is now as 
strong as it was in the time of Adam Smith that 
no nation ever did or ever will abandon dominion, 
however troublesome or expensive. Much of this 
territory has been gained and all of it has been kept 
by the power of the sea. Germany thinks to play 
in the twentieth century the part played by England 
in the eighteenth, the same part on a greater scale. 
The British Empire with its British ideals is fighting 
against the German Empire with its German ideals. 

If we look to our Allies we find also that the war is no 
trade war or money war. It is not the money value of 
her lost provinces that France is fighting for ; it is 
not the money value of unredeemed Italy that made 
Italy declare war on Austria. Russia is fighting 
heart and soul, surely not for trade or money, but for 
Ivussian ideas against German ideas. And the more 



26 THE NEUTRALITY OF THE UNITED STATES IN 

the conduct of the war reveals the inner nature of 
the struggle, the more clear does it become that with 
all these diversities of national aims the common 
aim of all the Allies is to fight against the ideas of 
German military dominion. 
(/ There are differences between all the allied nations 
in their ideals, but the differences are overshadowed 
by the common resolve to restrain the military power 
of Germany. 

For the present argument the case of the British 
Empire may be taken as the test case. We have 
seen that British interests are not only or mainly 
monetary. 

What, then, are those great ideas that the British 
Empire stands for ? If it is not an overgrown trading 
concern, what is it '? What are British interests 
if not purely commercial or monetary '? 

If one word must be used instead of money that 
word must be power. The British Empire has 
been built up not to make money but to make power. 

But it will be objected — and such, indeed, is the 
latest German argument — British power is a greater 
menace to other nations than British money or 
British monopoly of trade. The British Marinismus 
is a greater peril than the German Militarismus. 

The answer is that British power is not used for 
the aggrandisement of any man or body of men, 
any absolute monarch or privileged class ; nor is 
British power extended and maintained through 
some striving for national glory, some kind of empire 
record-breaking in millions of miles, or of people, 
or of money. 



RELATION TO BRITISH AND GERMAN EMPIRES 27 

British power is a means and not an end in itself. 
Nor has the end been lost sight of in the means, 
as in the miser's hoarding. British power is not 
a meaningless lust for exacting obedience from other 
people, though the love of power in this sense is 
one of the strongest sins of the natural man. 

The British Empire has been extended and is 
maintained not to increase coercion but to increase 
liberty. Its internal stability and its external suffer- 
ance by other nations alike rest on liberty. The 
only disruption of the Empire took place when for 
the moment British statesmen forgot the great 
tradition. The greatest peril the Empire ever incurred 
was in fighting for its own liberties and the liberties 
of Europe. Once more, after a hundred years, the 
same peril has recurred, and England and Europe 
are again fighting for liberty. 



CHAPTER III 

THE NON-COMMERCIAL BRITISH INTERESTS 

The greatest British interest — greater than riches, 
greater than peace — is hberty ; and liberty is a tree 
with many roots and many branches. There is 
an old saying that the oak cannot grow except on 
free soil. This is not the language of poetry but of 
law. It recalls a time when the greater part of the 
land of England was held and cultivated on servile 
tenures. With any insecurity of tenure the planting 
of trees, especially long-lived trees, is foolishness. 
It is true that for centuries the greater part of the 
population of England was in a state of agrarian 
serfdom. But the serfdom was always less burden- 
some relatively than in other countries, and was 
far more speedily reduced and abolished. The cele- 
brated reforms of Stein by which serfdom was 
abolished in Prussia culminated in the edict of 1807 ; 
English agrarian serfdom had been practically 
abolished as the result of moral and economic causes 
more than four centuries before. 

There is another old saying that the Englishman's 
house is his castle. The sacred right of the homestead 



THE NEUTRALITY OF THE UNITED STATES 29 

is traced back to pre-historic times. The tradition 
of individual freedom has been handed down from 
generation to generation, and the main idea in 
progress from age to age has been the enlargement 
of that freedom. 

It is only in times of stress that the nature and 
strength of the foundations of buildings or of states 
are revealed. The present war has shown the strength 
of this very elementary idea of freedom. The mere 
thought that any home in our islands could be sub- 
jected to German outrage is itself an outrage. Apart 
from any idea of personal sufferings or indignities, 
the mere idea of being under German rule is so abhor- 
rent that any sacrifice seems preferable. 

Under the influence of the ideas of utility that 
have been so much in evidence in the social legis- 
lation of the last half-century the strength of this 
foundational idea of liberty has sometimes been 
overlooked. People have begun to think that liberty 
is only one utility amongst many others, and that 
in the interests of " the greatest happiness of the 
greatest number " more and more of the liberties 
of the various minorities, which the new blessings 
of the various majorities bring into being, may be 
more and more curtailed. " The greatest happiness 
of the greatest number " principle is not always very 
favourable to the principle of liberty. In peace 
time liberty may even be classed merely as one of 
the pleasures of idleness in the same way as short 
hours and many holidays. 

War, especially war as waged by Germany, has 
shown that with the mass of the British people 

c 



30 THE NEUTRALITY OF THE UNITED STATES IN 

the supreme test is still liberty. As regards happiness, 
the present generation will never find the balance 
of the war in its favour, unless we beg the question 
and talk of the happiness of liberty. 

It is not meant to imply that the Englishman 
alone has a love of liberty. On the contrary, every 
Englishman believes that the love of liberty is part 
and parcel of human nature. But by a combination 
of geographical and historical and racial incidents 
or providences this very elementary kind of liberty 
has had with us more room and a longer time for 
growth. 

It is, however, when we pass from the individual 
to the law and government by which this elementary 
liberty is safeguarded that we best understand why 
England is always spoken of by foreign writers as 
the classic land of liberty. The foundation of the 
whole system of government is a constitution that 
is in the most essential part unwritten and free 
from the shackles of legal technicalities. The common 
law and the statute law are derived from varied 
sources and illustrate different principles, but there 
is always present the idea of maintaining the maximum 
of individual freedom that is consistent with the 
attainment of the varied objects of social and political 
union ; the maximum of liberty with the minimum 
of coercion. 

We are so familiar with these larger aspects of 
freedom : freedom of the spoken and the printed 
word ; freedom of religion ; freedom to work or to idle ; 
freedom to give or withhold labour even in the 
defence of the country or in the provision of necessary 



RELATION TO BRITISH AND GERMAN EMPIRES 31 

requisites ; freedom of choice in the inultitudinoiis 
forms of representation — we are so famiHar with all 
these varied forms of liberty, as we are with light and 
air, that we never notice the continued miracle with 
which they are sustained. Even after months of war, 
the idea of individual liberty was persisted in until 
it endangered the military efficiency of the nation. 
It was solemnly announced in a manifesto by the 
publicans that the proposed regulations of drink 
" savoured of militarism." Freedom to strike ; free- 
dom to get drunk; freedom to work nnich or little ; 
freedom of labour to extract war bonuses, and of 
capital war profits, out of the necessities of the country 
and the war debt — these were some of the results 
of the long-continued liberty of the individual, some 
of the defects of the virtue. 

Out of respect to the national prejudices in favour 
of liberty the Government proceeded with the 
utmost caution. Persuasion and lavish expenditure 
were the methods j)i'eferred to any kind of coercion. 
The principal exception was the censorship of the 
press — an exception which seemed only to prove the 
rule. In none of the other belligerent countries, 
least of all in Germany, were these difficulties felt, 
and one reason was that in their ordinary life the 
people had not been used to the same degree 
of freedom from governmental regulation and 
control. 

Our treatment of aliens on the outbreak of the 
war showed very plainly the survival of this dominance 
of liberty. Through centuries we had offered a 
right of asylum to political or religious refugees ; 

C 12 



32 THE NEUTRALITY OF THE UNITED STATES IN 

we had also welcomed or suffered the incursion of all 
kinds of aliens into all our economic activities, from 
the highest finance down to the lowest sweated 
labour. And no doubt on balance we had gained 
marvellously from the immigrations, though gain — 
moral or material — ^was not the motive for admission. 
It was only with the greatest difficulty that we 
managed to see that the liberty accorded to aliens in 
peace ought not to be permitted in war. 

These illustrations are here brought forward to 
show that, in spite of all our advances to socialism 
and the growing extension of governmental inter- 
ference, the dominant strain in the British character 
and in the British Government is now, as it has always 
been, the love of liberty. This love of liberty is not 
due to any reasoned calculation of the greater happi- 
ness that comes out of it — as if we loved freedom 
because freedom brings happiness — but because free- 
dom is part of the nature or of the second nature of 
the people. Unquestionably we believe^ — and we 
know by experience — that liberty brings in its train 
other blessings, such as wealth and comfort ; but in 
case of conflict, as this war shows, the wealth and the 
comfort are secondary to the liberty. As a nation 
we shall lose much money and lose much comfort, 
but if we keep our liberty we are content. 

This same love of liberty is the dominant note in 
all our literature. The Germans say we are a nation 
of money-grubbers, and only live for trade. How 
comes it that in all our literature there is no glori- 
fication of wealth or of the money power, whilst on 
the other hand all our great writers, poets, historians. 



RELATION TO BRITISH AND GERMAN EMPIRES 33 

or philosophers, have glorified liberty ? Milton's 
sonnet on his blindness may speak for all three : 

CjTiac, this tlai'ee-years day, these eyes, though clear. 

To outward view, of blemish or of spot. 

Bereft of light, their seeing have forgot, 
Nor, to their idle orbs, doth sight appear 
Of sun, or moon, or star, tlii'oughout the year. 

Or man or woman. Yet I argiie not 

Against Heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot 
Of heart or hope ; but still bear up and steer 
Right onward. What supports me, dost thou ask ? 

The conscience, friend, to have lost them overplied. 
In liberty's defence my noble task, 

Of which all Europe rings from side to side. 
This thought might lead me tlirough the world's vain mask. 

Content though blind had I no better guide. 

Not only has this love of liberty been dominant 
in these islands, bnt wherever the Briton has 
wandered he has carried with him his love of liberty 
and his dislike of regulation. Many and varied are 
the origins of the British Empire, bnt from the 
beginning we find not the systematic planting of 
colonies or the organised conquest of less developed 
peoples, but as it were a haphazard sowing of the 
seeds of future dominion. Everywhere the ruling 
idea was liberty, and the seeds were blown about 
where the wind listed. The seeds were planted and 
grew up into great trees, and the trees grew better 
than the trees of other nations because they had 
greater freedom. In the new lands, whether tliinlv 
or thickly peopled by the original inhabitants, the 
new settlers (or invaders) imported from the home 
country the minimum quantity of the government 
they found to be necessary. They relied on the 
home country for their defence against Europe, and 



34 THE NEUTRALITY OF THE UNITED STATES IN 

in return submitted to restraints on trade and in- 
dustry ; wliicli restraints, by the way, were very 
little felt by reason of the universal toleration of the 
smuggler, the oldest " free trader." 

In many cases the amount of government imported 
from the homeland was too little. The British 
colonists in North America became in truth little 
Englanders, almost parochial in their interests. The 
British traders in India led Adam Smith to declare 
that a body of traders is not fit to govern, and is sure 
to exalt its own liberty at the expense of the liberties 
of the subject people. The East India Company in 
the course of time was of necessity, or in the interests 
of liberty, displaced by the British Government. 

The Magna Carta of the people of India was con- 
firmed in the Queen's proclamation (1858) in these 
words : " We hold ourselves bound to the natives of 
our Indian territories by the same obligations of duty 
which bind us to all our other subjects." And the 
historian of the Expansion of England comments : 
" That is, conquest confers no peculiar rights, or 
India is not for practical purposes a conquered 
country." 

The conquest of India itself would more properly 
be described as the suppression of the anarchy of 
India, and to the masses of the people the conquest 
was an extension of liberty. 

It is not possible in the limits of this inquiry even 
to sketch the main branches of the growth of the 
British Empire. If it is disputed that the main idea 
has been the extension of liberty, there can be no 
dispute that the achievement of liberty has been one 



RELATION TO BRITISH AND GERMAN EMPIRES 35 

main result of the extension of our Empire. It is 
only the largest toleration that could bind together 
the diversity of races and religions and civilisations 
that make up the British Empire. The strength of 
this binding and the nature of it were shown on the 
outbreak of war in a way that astonished the world, 
and most of all Germany. Instead of the British 
forces, such as they were, being diverted all over the 
earth to suppress rebellions, exactly the opposite was 
seen. Not that the dominions and the dependencies 
are fighting for us simply out of affection to Britain. 
Each part has its own patriotism, and in one sense 
it is India for the Indians and Africa for the Afri- 
canders and Canada for the Canadians, and so on ; 
but in the wider sense there is the patriotism of every 
part for the whole. All the parts are fighting to 
maintain "the immense majesty of the British peace," 
under which they enjoy their liberties, each in its 
way and its own degree. 

But even yet the full influence of the idea of liberty 
in British policy has not been indicated, although 
we have passed from the Englishman's house to his 
Empire. That same spirit of liberty and toleration 
that we apply to the moralities and religions within 
the Empire we apply as far as may be to other inde- 
pendent peoples. No doubt this respect to the inde- 
pendence of other nations was of slow growth, and 
was not instinctive like the love of personal liberty. 
It was not until the nineteenth century that non- 
intervention became the accepted maxim of British 
policy. Between the Revolution that brought 
WilHam of Orange to London and the battle of 



36 THE NEUTRALITY OF THE UNITED STATES IN 

Waterloo which sent Napoleon to St. Helena, we 
waged seven great wars, and out of one hundred and 
twenty-six years more than half were spent in war. 
As the result of these wars British power was very 
greatly extended all over the earth, although we lost 
in the process the best part. 

Since the Napoleonic wars the Empire has been 
still more widely extended, mainly, as was the case in 
the later expansions of the Roman Empire, through 
the necessity of scientific frontiers and of provision 
against the incursions of barbarism. Of these later 
acquisitions it may truly be said that they were forced 
upon us against the wishes of our strongest statesmen, 
who recognised that already our Empire was large 
enough. 

Of this later expansion of Empire, as of the earlier, 
there were no doubt many and diverse origins and 
occasions. But as contrasted with the former period, 
this later period of expansion was effected without 
war in Europe or America, with the exception of the 
Crimean War, in which the real motive was Asiatic. 
The British Empire stood for peace, and it maintained 
its defence with a minimum of military force. And 
the reason why so little military power was required 
was that the British rule practised liberty within its 
own limits and resjiected the liberties and the inde- 
pendence of the nations l^eyond its bounds. The 
British idea is not to enforce on a reluctant world 
one model of culture or one special British-made set 
of ideas. Such a striving for uniformity is contrary 
to our principle of liberty. We recognise that it takes 
all kind of folk to make a world : great nations and 



RELATION TO BRITISH AND GERMAN EMPIRES 37 

little nations ; Christian and non-Cliristian of endless 
shades of varieties ; Eastern civilisations and Western 
and all their diversities ; and all the tribes of bar- 
barians of all sorts that are strong enough to with- 
stand the ideas and the diseases of civilisation. The 
only kind of ideas we cannot recognise or tolerate are 
the Germanic ideas of " military culture " ; for these 
ideas are destructive of the very foundations of our 
system of liberty and toleration. 

Just as in the homeland our ideal is liberty, and 
just as one of the first claims of liberty is equality 
before the law, so also as regards other nations we 
recognise that their own independence has their first 
claim, and that all of them in the insistence on this 
right can claim equality before the law of nations. 
Our sympathy with small nations is part of our ideas 
of liberty ; it is akin to the ideas that with us allow 
freedom of speech and freedom of the press to the 
smallest minority as much as to the largest majority. 
So it is with our respect to the little nations. Being 
small they seem entitled to more respect from the 
law, which of themselves they cannot enforce. Just 
as in our villages we put up a notice, " School — 
Please drive slowly," so in our diplomatic maps we 
mark " Drive slowly " for the little nations. Witness 
the Balkan States. The (Jerman road-hog on the 
other hand puts on the pace if a little nation gets in 
the way. Witness Belgium. 

This recognition of national independence and 
national diversity not only accounts for our natural 
respect for small and diverse nations, but also for 

c* 



38 THE NEUTRALITY OF THE UNITED STATES IN 

the variety and diversity of our alliances. In the 
matter of alliances our first thought, as of every 
other independent nation, is of the national safety, 
and with us national safety means not only the 
safety of the British islands but of all the Britains 
overseas and all the dominions and the protectorates 
and the subjections that enjoy their liberties under 
the British peace. 

In the foregoing argument it has been maintained 
that the greatest of British interests is liberty, with 
the understanding that liberty has many roots and 
many branches. But in none of its meanings is 
liberty the same as anarchy. Liberty must always 
mean liberty in conformity to law. Dante said 
that the highest gift of God to man was the gift of 
free will ; and the highest use of that free will was 
to obey with gladness the law of God. The liberty 
claimed by the CJerman to do as he pleases in " self- 
defence," and to obey or not obey the laws of war 
or of God, as he chooses, is not liberty, but anarchy. 

The first foundational law with which liberty 
must be in accord is the law of truth. Truth, like 
liberty, cannot come under any simple or exact 
definition ; and it is easy to be a jesting Pilate. 
But truth, like liberty, can speak to the heart. Perhaps 
nobody can define truth, but the natural man hates 
a liar as he hates a serpent. One thing we mean 
when wc say that the liberty of the free man is under 
the law of truth is that the free man nnist be true to 
his word. The knight errant of chivalry obeyed 
this law : better death than falsehood ; to give 
the lie was the most deadly of insults. All the 



RELATION TO BRITISH AND GERMAN EMPIRES 39 

martyrs of all the religions have died for the love 
of truth ; and as we range over the liberties of man- 
kind and their respective restraints, we come at last 
to the contracts and the agreements of commerce, 
and to liberty as understood by the world that thinks 
in money. 

And in this money world, as in the world of chivalry, 
which seems at first altogether different, the first 
law of liberty is the law of truth. " His word is as 
good as his bond " is an old text that needs no sermon. 
Were it not so, if the ideas of military culture were 
brought into commerce, the world that talks in 
money and thinks in money would fall to pieces. 
No doubt the world of money gets along in spite of 
a certain number of frauds and bad debts and bad 
men and liars of various kinds, but so also the men 
in the trenches get along in spite of the minor pests. 
They could not get along, however, if the Germans 
poisoned all the air ; and if all men were liars com- 
merce would be dead and robbery would take its place. 

If in the world of affairs the spolcen word or even 
the nod of assent is so binding that a man nmst not 
go back on his word or his nod, so nuich the more 
binding are the agreements that to prevent any 
mistakes are put into writing and signed by the 
parties to the agreement. 

The moral of this little old-fashioned homily on 
the pledged word is that the word should not be given 
and the paper should not be signed unless with the 
fullest intention of keeping the word and redeeming 
the promise of the paper. 

What is true of the binding force of the promise 

c* 2 



40 THE NEUTRALITY OF THE UNITED STATES IN 

as between man and man is true also as between 
nation and nation. It may be good worldly wisdom 
to beware of the entanglement of alliances, but if 
needs be that alliances come, let the full meaning 
be realised and the full promise be redeemed. No 
doubt if things change and with them the real 
meaning of the words the case is altered. It may be 
difficult to interpret the real intent of a treaty after 
the lapse of time and change. But apart from the 
casuistry of diplomacy the presumption with nations, 
as with men, is always strong in favour of the written 
word and the signed treaty. 

That the common sense of mankind still supports 
this old idea of fidelity to treaty obligations is shown 
by the pains taken even by the most aggressive of 
nations to make excuses for the violation of 
treaties. 

With regard to British observance of the binding 
force of agreements, written and unwritten, the action 
taken at the outbreak of this war is so fresh in the 
memory and so convincing in its stress that no further 
comment is necessary. And having regard to the 
magnitude of the British Empire and the variety of 
its interests, it is plain that its general policy must 
be guided by very simple and general principles ; 
of which the strict observance of treaties and of the 
pledged word is fundamental. 

Once the word has been given, the nice calculation 
of interests is displaced by the simple question : 
What have we promised ? Is our word not worth 
the paper it is written on ? Or is it to be kept at the 
risk of war, in which immense loss is certain ? 



RELATION TO BRITISH AND GERMAN EMPIRES 41 

This survey of British interests does not profess 
to be complete. The object in view is to compare 
the British Empire with the German Empire, and 
stress is laid on the ideas in which the difference is 
most marked. We come now to the German side 
of the comparison. 



Note. 

Tlie Morality of the Observance of Treaties. 

It is true of the covenants between nations, as of the 
covenant between God and man, that " the letter 
killeth, but the spirit giveth life," Dante is held to 
be one of the greatest of moral teachers, but he 
discusses with much subtlety the question whether a 
man may under any conditions break his vow or if 
he may make a satisfactory substitute. {Paradise, 
Canto V.) His conclusion is : 

" Take then no vow at random : ta'en, with faith 
Preserve it : yet not bent, as Jephthah once. 
BUndlj^ to execute a rash resolve. 
Whom better it had suited to exclaim, 
' I have done ill ' than to redeem his pledge 
By doing worse :..,." 

{Car if s version) 

Why recall this old learning in the twentieth 
century ? Because now, as always, nations as well 
as men must look to the meaning of their vows and 
promises, and not use the letter to see from how much 
of the real promise they can escape or how much they 
can pervert to their own uses a literal reading under 
changed conditions. Much has been made by the 



42 THE NEUTRALITY OF THE UNITED STATES IN 

German defenders of tlie violation of Belgium of what 
may be called Gladstone's gloss on the treaty of 1839. 
The gloss without the context is quoted by Mr. von 
Mach {op. cit. p. 141). Notwithstanding that the 
treaty of 1839 guaranteed the independence of 
Belgium, on the outbreak of the war (1870) between 
France and Germany the British Government made a 
new treaty specially with France and Germany to safe- 
guard this independence. In defending this action 
Gladstone said : " I am not able to subscribe to the 
doctrine of those who have held in this House that 
the simple fact of the existence of a guarantee is 
binding on every party to it, irrespective altogether 
of the particular position in which it may find itself 
at the time when the occasion for acting on the 
guarantee arises." This sentence with the relevant 
context was quoted by Sir Edward Grey in his speech 
the day before the declaration of war, August 3rd,1914. 
"The treaty," he said, "is an old treaty — 1839 — and 
that was the view taken of it in 1870 .... The honour 
and interests are at least as strong to-day as in 1870, 
and we cannot take a more narrow view or a less 
serious view of our obligations and of the importance 
of those obligations than was taken by Mr. Gladstone's 
Government in 1870." The sentence indicated as 
omitted ... in this quotation has only been post- 
poned for the sake of emphasis. " It — i.e., the 1839 
treaty — is one of those treaties which are founded not 
only for consideration for Belgium, which benefits 
under the treaty, but in the interests of those who 
guarantee the neutrality of Belgium." If it be said 
that since 1839 conditions had changed, the answer 



RELATION TO BRITISH AND GERMAN EMPIRES 43 

from tlie British point of view is that the change in 
conditions had made more necessary than before 
observance of the full meaning of the treaty. Belgian 
independence had become more than ever a safeguard 
of France and Britain. 



CHAPTER IV 

GERMAN NATIONAL INTERESTS 

I. — Commercial Interests 

The German Empire as it at present exists is a 
product of the last half -century. If the British 
Empire may be regarded as the expansion of England, 
in the same way the ({erman Empire may be regarded 
as the expansion of Prussia. This predominance of 
Prussia is so well known and has been so much forced 
on the attention in the present war, that in the 
comparison here attempted it may be taken for 
granted. 

The development of the modern (lernian Empire 
must be considered from two sides : the Commerical 
and the Military. 

On both sides we are here concerned not with the 
statistics or the notable events of the growth of the 
CTcrman Empire, which are generally well-known, 
but with the ideas underlying this growth, which are 
not so well known. 

In the case of Germany it is specially fruitful to 
look foi' leading ideas, and the task is much more 



THE NEUTRALITY OF THE UNITED STATES 45 

easy than in the case of England. For two reasons : 
first, the German Empire is only half a century old ; 
and secondly, the German Empire has arisen from the 
direct apphcation of certain fundamental ideas. In 
England, as we have seen, the ruling idea in expansion 
has been liberty ; negatively, this liberty has implied 
freedom from state control, and positively, freedom 
for the emergence of a variety of ideas and institutions. 
In Germany, on the other hand, the ruling idea has 
been the predominance of state control and the 
consequential practical development of ideas on the 
governmental pattern. 

In the treatment of the ideas of German commercial 
development we may take as the basis the great 
work by Friedrich List on the Natiotial System of 
Political Economy. List was not so big a man as 
Adam Smith, but it is not too much to say that he 
had more influence in the development of the com- 
mercial policy of the German Empire than Adam 
Smith in the British Empire. 

List died in the year of the repeal of the Corn Laws 
(1846), and his book was completed about two years 
earlier. He had been engaged all his life in applying 
his ideas, both in practice and in journalism, in 
Germany and in the United States ; and the Natiotial 
System is the final shape of these ideas with special 
reference to Germany. Perhaps it may be thought 
that a book seventy years old is now out of date. 
The fact is that the policy laid down by List for the 
commercial development of the German Empire is 
the policy which in all essentials has dominated and 
still dominates German statesmanship. Instead of 



46 THE NEUTRALITY OF THE UNITED STATES IN 

being out of date, List, like Adam Smith (on the 
imperial side), is rather coming into date. List aimed 
at a great expansion of C4ermany over-seas as well as 
in Europe. He had larger ideas of Empire than were 
favoured by Bismarck ; and it is precisely these 
larger ideas, put into practice by far lesser men, 
which are the real cause of the present war. It is 
well known that after the Franco-German War 
Bismarck set himself against colonial expansion and 
aimed at the consolidation and defence in itself and 
in its alliances of the new Empire. But the ideas of 
List were always at work beneath the surface, though 
as often happens they were associated with other 
names. All that was needed was the recognition of 
the ideas by the Government. With the disappear- 
ance of the restraining influence of Bismarck the 
ideas of a greater Germany came more and more 
into favour with the governing classes ; they have 
attained their maximum bloom in the present 
war. 

Above all other nations, as List himself observed 
in a very striking ]3assage, the Germans are subject 
to the rule of theories. " Germany developed herself 
in a totally different way from other nations. Else- 
where high mental culture grew out of the evolution 
of the material powers of production ; whilst in 
Germany the growth of the material powers of 
production was the outcome chiefly of an antecedent 
intellectual development." Even in the eighteenth 
century he goes on to show the lead was always 
taken by the German State Governments in the 
application of ideas. " Hence at the present day 



RELATION TO BRITISH AND GERMAN EMPIRES 47 

(1844) the whole culture of the Germans is theoretical. 
For the moment the Germans are in the position of an 
individual who, having been formerly deprived of the 
use of his limbs, first learned theoretically the arts of 
standing and walking, of eating and drinking, of 
laughing and weeping, and then only proceeded to 
put them into practice." 

The Germans have learned from List (and his 
plagiarists) the theory of commercial expansion, and 
are now engaged in putting the last stages of theory 
into practice. No douljt there are some differences^ 
owing to changes in conditions, but anyone who reads 
List's work will be astonished at the way in which his 
ideas have been actually realised by Germany and 
are now more than ever the basis of the German 
forward policy. 

Although the Germans are, as List showed, a nation 
of theorists, it does not follow that in their policy 
they pay no attention to history and experience. 
On the contrary, especially in economics, they have 
emphasised the fundamental importance of tlie 
historical method. List's great work is divided into 
four books. The first is a survey of the history of the 
chief commercial nations, and the third is a history 
of the chief connnercial systems (theoretical), and in 
the other two books there are constantly references 
to history and experience. The fourth book. The 
Politics, is specially concerned with British Lisular 
Supremacy in relation to the German ibnmiercial 
Union. 

It is the present fashion in Germany to speak with 

' E.g., List did not approve of protection to agriculture. 



48 THE NEUTRALITY OF THE UNITED STATES IN 

military contemptuousness of the commercial aims of 
England. As a matter of fact the leading idea in 
German commercial policy has been the imitation of 
England on the lines laid down by List. List was a 
theorist who looked for the confirmation of his theories 
to history. He found such confirmation in the 
history of the expansion of England, especially in the 
first period (before 1776). Accordingly imitation of 
England is the clue to German expansion : that is 
to say, England in her protectionist stage. According 
to List England had become strong enough to throw 
aside protection after Waterloo, but other nations 
must pass through the earlier stages of protection to 
young industries. They must follow in England's 
steps, and the first steps must be the establishment 
for themselves of manufacturing power. So long as 
they remain purely providers of food and raw material 
for England, England will have the lion's share in the 
international feast. 

Here is the main argument in List's own words. 
" England owes her immense colonial possessions 
to her surpassing manufacturing power. If the 
other European nations wish also to partake of the 
profitable business of cultivating waste territories 
and civilising barbarous nations or nations once 
civilised tliat have again sunk into barbarism, they 
must commence with the development of their own 
internal manufacturing poivers, of their mercantile 
marine, and of their naval poiver." This advice 
was tendered specially to Germany. " If any nation 
whatever is qualified for the establishment of a 
national manufacturing power it is Germany." Manu- 



RELATION TO BRITISH AND GERMAN EMPIRES 49 

facturing power was the first step and naval power 
was the last. 

Seventy years ago List pointed with truth to 
German superiority in education and in adminis- 
tration, to her skill in inventions, and to her vast 
natural resources in agricultural and mineral wealth. 
To give full scope to these great productive powers 
Germany must become first of all a great manufactur- 
ing power. She must not be content to get manu- 
factures from England in exchange for grain and 
timber. 

But this was only the beginning. Germany must 
import directly from tropical countries the produce 
she requires, and pay for it with her own goods. 

She must carry on this trade in her own ships. 
She must protect these ships with her own flag 
and her own navy. 

The first step — manufacturing power — does not 
mean simply technical production in factories. It 
includes on List's view the development of rail- 
ways, waterways, and the organisation of industry. 
Germany was to improve on the English example 
with greater knowledge, and profit by England's 
mistakes. 

The basis of the new German Empire must be 
a great customs union with free trade within its 

o 

borders and external protection : the old English 
model improved. Such a Zollverein or customs union 
was designed by List himself as lar back as 1818. 
Within this great confederation as developed in 
its final form in List's National System there were 
to be included all the German maritime territories, 



50 THE NEUTRALITY OF THE UNITED STATES IN 

and also Holland and Belgium. Not only so, but 
the greater Germany was to include Switzerland. 
In fact we liave in List all the ideas of Pan-German- 
ism with a very wide interpretation of the word 
German. 

The views of List on Holland are of special interest 
at the present time. " From a national point of 
view we say and maintain that Holland is, in reference 
to its geographical position as well as in respect to 
its commercial and industrial circumstances and to 
the origin and language of its inhabitants, a German 
province which has been separated from Germany 
at a period of German national disunion, without 
whose reincorporation in the German Union Germany 
may be compared to a house the door of which belongs 
to a stranger. Holland belongs as much to Germany 
as Brittany and Normandy belong to France, and so 
long as Holland is determined to constitute an in- 
dependent kingdom of her own, Germany can as 
little attain independence and power as France 
would have Ijeen enal^led to attain them if those 
provinces had remained in the hands of the English." 

If we look to the economic development of Gerinany 
before the outbreak of the war we see at once a re- 
markable realisation of List's ideas, with the ex- 
ception of the territorial expansion, wliich it is the 
business of the war to secure. 

In Europe Germany has become second only 
to Britain in manufacturing power and in shipping ; 
and in the organisation of internal means of com- 
nnmication and of industry genei'ally, at least the 
equal and probably the superior. By all the usual 



RELATION TO BRITISH AND GERMAN EMPIRES 51 

tests Germany has made astonishing progress, especi- 
ally since the last great war. 

This progress in wealth has been accompanied 
by similar growth in national power. And in fact 
the production of wealth and its distribution have 
been so organised as to promote the military and 
naval power of the country. The railways are 
largely strategic (as Hindenberg proved) ; agri- 
culture has been fostered with the definite aim of 
independence as regards food supplies, and apparently 
the aim has been achieved. The export of capital 
to foreign states has been discouraged so that the 
national industries might be first strengthened. A 
check has been imposed on the emigration of the 
living capital and the population has shown a remark- 
able increase. 

But the final stages of List's project of empire 
have not yet been attained. It is true that Germany 
had already acquired before the war a Colonial 
Empire of over a million square miles in area, or 
about six times the area of Continental Germany. 
But the European population of these colonies 
was only about one-fortieth of a million, and of 
natives there were only about twelve millions. Com- 
pared with the British Empire the German over-seas 
Empire was negligible, although it might have made 
a good enough beginning for learning the art of 
colonial government and development. 

But Germany was too proud or too impatient to 
learn this art, which seemed a very long art to the 
individuals who had only the allotted span of life. 
War seemed a much better and certainly a quicker 



52 THE NEUTRALITY OF THE UNITED STATES IN 

way to empire ; and the map of empire drawn })y 
List was not limited to barbarous regions. There 
were also the nations which had once been civilised 
and had sunk into barbarism. Turkey (even seventy 
years ago) List compared to a corpse only supported 
by the living. In the same class of degenerate civili- 
sations were the Persians and Chinese and Hindoos 
and all other Asiatic peoples. What fields could be 
more suitable for the application of the German 
powers of expansion ? The great obstacle, on the 
German view, in all these regions was the British 
Empire. 

List also contended that Germany should try whether, 
and how far, German colonies can be founded in 
Australia, New Zealand, or in other islands of 
Australasia. He observed with regret that German 
emigrants to the United States and other countries 
were lost for ever in the next generation. 

For the extension of national power Germany nuist 
have her own settlements. The right of the English 
to the Continent of Australia on the principle of first 
occupancy was as absurd as the right claimed by the 
Popes over the partition of the New World. 

Can there be any doubt that these ideas of List 
have been and are the ruling ideas in Germany's 
economic policy ? Germany aims at being a world 
power — the greatest of world powers. But every- 
where her expansion is checked by Britain. Li Africa, 
Asia, South-Eastern Europe, Britain bars the way to 
German aspiration. Even in Northern Europe 
Britain stands in the way of the Germanic absorption 
of Belgium and Holland. Germany had hoped. 



RELATION TO BRITISH AND GERMAN EMPIRES 53 

through a miscalculation as to the lethargy and the 
love of peace of England, that she would be able to 
extend her power in Northern and in South-Eastern 
Europe first of all, and later from this new vantage 
ground overthrow or supplant the British Empire. 
She did not mean to attempt all the expansion in one 
great and prolonged war ; two wars much less in 
magnitude and duration were suggested by the pre- 
liminary wars with Denmark and with Austria. 

The galling thing to Germany is that she considers 
herself in all the essentials of national power far 
superior to Britain. In the twentieth century Ger- 
many seems relatively to other nations far stronger 
than was England in the eighteenth ; stronger in 
military power and stronger in the management of 
foreign trade. Why then should Germany not imitate 
Britain and displace Britain from the supremacy by 
the old methods which out of weakness or folly 
Britain has discarded ? 

Under German government and organisation the 
territories that now form the British Empire would be 
developed both on the military and on the commercial 
side to an extent that Britain has never dreamed of. 
Germany would not be so simple as to leave the 
millions of India free from military service and from 
taxes meant to increase the imperial revenue and not 
merely to provide for the wants of India. It might 
be too difficult to try to rule the freedom-loving 
Britons overseas, but they could be cooped up in part 
of the vacant territories. Why should the Austra- 
lians presume to own a continent and the Canadians 
half a continent ? 



54 THE NEUTRALITY OF THE UNITED STATES IN 

But Germany overlooked the most real forces in 
the growth of the British Empire. The old monopoly 
was abandoned, and still the British Empire grew in 
wealth ; the Navigation Acts were repealed, and still 
the foreign trade increased and British shipping and 
naval power increased. The method of absorption 
by war with European Powers was abandoned, and 
still the Empire grew. The difficulty for British 
statesmen was to control the expansion rather than 
encourage it by artificial means. The colonies be- 
came more and more self-governing and practically 
independent nations, but, as the present war has 
shown, never was their loyalty to the mother country 
and to the Empire as a whole so pronounced. And 
what was the reason when, according to the German 
modes of measurement, the British Empire was 
decadent and Britain had lost tlie art of imperial 
government ? 

The reason was that Britain relied not on military 
discipli ne and State management, but on liberty ; relied 
not on the suppression of native ideas and customs, but 
on tlieir recognition as far as was possible ; and relied 
on the observance, and not on opportunist violation, 
of treaties with other nations. 

The German military morality is indeed altogether 
unsuited for any sound expansion of empire, as Ger- 
many will find to her cost. The wages of nations, 
like the wages of men, are higher in proportion to 
the trust reposed in them. Good faith is as essential 
to economic as discipline is to mihtary efficiency. 
National discredit spreads to the individuals that make 
up a nation. The nation that devastated Belgium 



RELATION TO BRITISH AND GERMAN EMPIRES 55 

will not be trusted as before. Least of all is the 
German military morality suited to the extension of 
over-seas dominion. What State in the British 
Empire, if the free choice were offered on the con- 
clusion of the war, would put itself under German 
militarism ? Not one but would resist the transfer 
to the utmost. Not one would kill Britain to make 
Germany king. 

The British Empire stands for the maximum of 
liberty with the minimum of military discipline and 
military coercion. In Germany, on the other hand, 
and especially in the Germany of to-day, obedience 
is the foundational virtue, and military discipline is 
made to permeate the whole life of the people. 

In the present chapter the attention has been 
confined to German commercial interests only, and 
all the leading ideas are to be found in List's great 
work. 

But there is a vital difference as regards the method 
of attaining these commercial interests actually pur- 
sued by Germany and that advocated by List. It 
would have been well for Germany if she had followed 
out the leading ideas of List's politics as well as his 
economic teaching. 

List looked to peaceful measures for the expansion 
of German commerce. Holland was to be induced 
by a system of preferential duties to enter the German 
Zollverein. The expansion of Germany in South- 
Eastern Europe was to be in alliance with England. 
German settlements in the continent of Australia 
were in some way to be arranged for by a general 
Euroj)ean policy as regards the appropriation of vast 



56 THE NEUTRALITY OF THE UNITED STATES IN 

unoccupied territories. List strongly advocated the 
" open door " in the whole of Asia. 

Although List writes bitterly of the English com- 
mercial supremacy, it must be remembered that he 
wrote before the repeal of the Corn Laws and the 
adoption of free trade. He was so far from being an 
enemy of England that he admired her political 
institutions, and he argued that the Greater Germany 
(including Holland, Belgium, and Switzerland) should 
have corresponding representative institutions. The 
expansion it must be recalled was to be by the methods 
of peace. His long residence in America had made him 
familiar in practice with the system of liberty. 

List argued against England's naval supremacy, and 
advocated " free ships, free goods " ; but his criticism 
of Napoleon's continental system concludes with the 
sentence : " Napoleon failed to estabhsh a con- 
tinental coalition against England, because with the 
nations of Europe the fear of his supremacy on land 
greatly outweighed the disadvantages which they 
suffered from the naval supremacy." The case of 
the German mock Napoleon is exactly similar. 

List's chapter on Insular Supremacy begins with a 
most striking eulogium on the British Empire. " In 
all ages, nations and powers have striven to attain 
to the dominion of the world, but hitherto not one of 
them has erected its power on so broad a foundation. 
How vain do the efforts of those appear to us who 
have striven to found their universal dominion on 
military po\ver compared with the attempt of England. 
. . . . Let us, liowever, do justice to this Power and to 
her eff'orts. The world has not been hindered in its 



RELATION TO BRITISH AND GERMAN EMPIRES 57 

progress but immensely aided in it by England .... 
She has become an example and a pattern to all 
nations in internal and in foreign policy as well as 
in great inventions and enterprises of every kind .... 
Who can tell how far behind the world might yet 
remain if no England had ever existed ? And if she 
now ceased to exist, who can estimate how far the 
human race would retrograde ? Let us then con- 
gratulate ourselves on the immense progress of that 
nation, and wish her prosperity for all future time." 

German militarism has culminated in the most 
bitter hatred of England, and once again, in the 
memorable words of Pitt, " England has saved 
herself by her exertions, and will, as I trust, save 
Europe by her example." 



CHAPTER V 

GERMAN NATIONAL INTERESTS 

II. — Militarism 

The German Empire is the expansion of Prussia. 
To Prussia it is due that the greatest national interest 
of Germany is mihtarism. MiUtarism was dominant 
in Prussia in the reign of the great Frederick. Perhaps 
in no contemporary evidence is this brought out 
so clearly as in the autobiography of Alfieri. When 
a young man he travelled all over Europe, and looked 
on men and things with the curious eye and open 
mind of a modern Ulysses. As a wealthy aristocrat 
he was presented (1769) at the court of Frederick, 
and to the horror of the courtiers did not appear 
in the uniform to which he was entitled as an Italian 
officer. He describes his feeling in passing from 
Prussia into Denmark, from an atmosphere of mili- 
tarism to one of industrialism, and sums up all by 
saying : " The chief reason why Copenhagen pleased 
me was that it was not Berlin and not Prussia, a 
country which has left a more unpleasing and painful 
impression on my mind than any other, notwithstand- 
ing that the Great Frederick had commanded arts 



THE NEUTRALITY OF THE UNITED STATES 59 

and letters and all kinds of prosperities to flourish 
in his shade . . . But those everlasting soldiers 
I cannot away with, and even now, after so many 
years, I am enraged with the thought of them as 
before I was with the sight of them." It was, 
however, in England that he found the most marked 
contrast with the militarism of Prussia. 

But this is ancient history. Alfieri was a contem- 
porary of Adam Smith. 

When we make a leap to the period of the present 
war the keenest searcher after truth finds it difficult 
to reconcile the conflicting evidence. Not the evi- 
dences of the methods of militarism in practice — 
for they are beyond dispute — but the evidences 
of the ideas on which the system rests. What we 
want to know is what militarism really means to 
the Germans themselves — ( Germans not actively en- 
gaged in the war. ^ The difficulty is that the views 
presented for consumption in neutral countries 
are quite different from those for consumjDtion in 
Germany. 

Mr. von Mach's book already referred to is specially 
designed for the American people. It was first 
published in October of last year. From the point 
of view natural to a German it is reasonable and 
persuasive in tone, and the ideas are the ideas of 
List, only less pronounced. 

In the seventh month of the war a book was 
published in Germany by Professor Sombi^rt, under 
the title of Traders and Heroes, with the sub-title, 
Patriotic Reflections. The book is addressed to Ger- 
mans, " for whom alone I write," and more specially 



6o THE NEUTRALITY OF THE UNITED STATES IN 

to " my young friends in the trenches." It is 
obviously intended to be taken seriously, and should 
be widely read as an example of the ideas of militarism 
in the most extreme form.^ The worst of it is for 
the searcher after truth that in substance and in 
detail it is in flat contradiction to the German- 
American version of Mr. von Mach. 

We may begin with an interesting contrast in 
detail. Mr. von Mach knows that the American 
people detest war and militarism ; and he begins 
his chapter on militarism by roundly asserting that 
" Germany is not the home of militarism either as 
regards the military spirit of her people or the 
efforts of the Government to have the most expensive 
military machinery at its disposal." In the chapter 
on the Emperor the same tone is adopted. The 
Emperor has been after all " the great prince of 
peace" and the patron of the peaceful pursuits of 
the Germans. Some speeches and addresses are 
reproduced which would have done credit to the 
Moderator of a Scottish Assembly or an Archbishop. 
The title of war lord is explained as commander-in- 
chief, and the divine right is interpreted to mean 
no more than a deep personal religious conviction, 
such (we suppose) as John Bunyan might have felt 
after he had felt the grace of God. So peaceful is 
the Emperor that it is a pity (says Mr. von Mach) there 
are so many military photographs sold of the Emperor. 
But this (he says) is explained in a very simple 

' An excellent translation, under the title Hucksters and Heroes 
has been made by Mr. Alexander Gray, wliich it is to be hoped 
will soon be published. 



RELATION TO BRITISH AND GERMAN EMPIRES 6i 

way. William II. suffers from a crippled arm, and 
when he is taken in uniform, with his left arm resting 
on the hilt of the sword, the shadows can be so 
managed that the deformity of this arm is hardly 
seen. The Emperor is not a Cromwell, and Mr. 
von Mach is not a courtier, but an explanation 
had to be given why " the prince of peace " was always 
in uniform. To correct this evil impression, begotten 
of the military photographs, Mr. von Mach has given 
as the frontispiece of his book a photograph of the 
Emperor sitting at his desk in his villa in Corfu, 
clad in an American straw-hat and a suit to match. 
" An American straw-hat is a poor hiding-place for 
a divine right halo." So says Mr. von Mach, and 
most truly, for the Emperor is quite unrecognisable 
in the garb of peace. He looks for all the world 
like a well-to-do shopkeeper in his villa by the sea. 
And the question naturally arises. Why should any 
mere man, shopkeeper or other, have it in his power 
to let loose the horrors of a world-war, and claim for 
himself a right to upset the recognised laws and 
customs by which in the course of centuries the 
horrors of war had been somewhat lessened 1 

The Emperor as shopkeeper brings me to Professor 
Sombart, some of whose writings, especially on 
Socialism, have been translated into English, and 
obtained a certain vogue in the United States. In 
Traders and Heroes the still small voice for the 
American peace-lover is displaced by the voice of 
thunder for the German, "for whom alone I write." 
Professor Sombart not only glories in militarism, 
but he makes it out to be the life and soul of the 

D 



62 THE NEUTRALITY OF THE UNITED STATES IN 

people. The Emperor, he is careful to explain, 
always appears in uniform, as also everyone else 
who is entitled to wear one, because " with us 
everything that relates to military matters enjoys 
precedence." " We are a nation of warriors." All 
well-meaning foreigners, he says, are anxious to free 
us from some institution or other, e.g., Eliot from the 
constitution, others from the Emperor, and so on, 
but for most people the question is to free us from 
militarism. All these well-meaning suggestions he 
asserts rest on the same false idea : as if the German 
institutions were something external (like the burden 
on the back of a donkey) ; but in reality they are only 
manifestations of the spirit and soul of the people. 

Militarism, like the rest, has a body as well as a 
soul ; the body or material part is seen in universal 
compulsory service, machine guns, moustaches, and 
uniforms. All this, however, is but the outer gar- 
ment. " What here manifests itself is born of a 
particular spirit, which penetrates the whole of our 
national existence ... in every domain of our 
existence public and private, external and internal. 
. . . Militarism is German heroism made visible." 
The main position is repeated over and over again 
and there can be no question as to the meaning 
or the lack of any c[ualification. " All the other 
branches of the life of the people are subservient 
to the military interests. In particular the economic 
life of the people is subordinated. The consequence 
is that in all branches of ]Dublic life and also in the 
private life of each individual German this spirit 
of training and discipline has established itself. 



RELATION TO BRITISH AND GERMAN EMPIRES 63 

. . . Whether we are deahng with schools or 
universities, workers' unions or the national bank, 
railways or learning, it is always the same spirit, it is 
always German militarism that inspires it, a spirit 
before which the foreigner stands as before a miracle. 
For it is out of this spirit that the works of organisation 
have been created which have once more astonished 
the world in this war." 

Even yet the climax has not been reached of this 
eulogy of militarism. Since it is only in war that we 
find that all the virtues of militarism arrive at their 
full bloom, because it is only in war that we find 
the action of true heroism, war appears, to the 
Germans who are filled with militarism, as in itself 
" a holy tiling, the holiest thing on earth." There 
is no mistake about the meaning of this holiness, 
and it is made more clear by contrast with the spirit 
of the shopkeeper. " With nothing are we so 
reproached by all hucksters as for the fact that we 
regard war as a holy thing. They say that it is in- 
human and senseless. The slaughter of the best men in 
a nation is brutish. Thus indeed it must appear 
to a huckster who knows nothing on earth higher 
than the individual natural life of man. We, how- 
ever, know that there is a higher life, the life of the 
nation, the life of the state." 

It is in this part of the argument that the only 
oasis appears in the moral desert of militarism. 
Self-sacrifice is also the corner-stone of the Christian 
faith ; and in every moral system that ever had 
a following to die for one's country is the most 
honoured and blessed of duties. 

D 'Z 



64 THE NEUTRALITY OF THE UNITED STATES IN 

But the oasis seems only a mirage when we try 
to find out what this higher hfe is and what is the 
nature of the state to which the individual must 
sacrifice himself. 

It is difficult to convey the ideas in English be- 
cause the ideas are foreign to English modes of 
thought. The essence is that the state is super- 
individual. Individual liberty, as we understand 
it, disappears. The state on the German view 
is neither founded nor erected by individuals, " nor 
does it have as its object the promotion of any 
interests of the individual whatever." "It is the 
conscious organisation of something above the in- 
dividual." Individuals are only to be allowed to 
develop their character in a manner that is of value 
to the whole. 

The fundamental difficulty about this conception 
of the state is never met or even mentioned, namely, 
who is to determine the highest policy to which all 
the obedience of the units is to be directed. The 
God of the Germans is merely a question-begging 
name — the name that gives the formal approval 
to the acts of the sovereign human power. What 
kind of a God is it whose first prophet is the Kaiser 
and his hereditary successor the Crown Prince ? 
If the divine guidance is not under the straw-hat 
of the Kaiser, where is it to be found ? 

In the absence of any foundation in religion or 
morality we are thrown back on militarism, not 
only as the only means but the only end of the state. 
And in this way we are landed in the hopeless con- 
tradiction that the highest manifestation is the state 



RELATION TO BRITISH AND GERMAN EMPIRES 65 

at war. This emphatically is the opinion of Professor 
Sombart. The long peace had, in his view, corrupted 
and degraded the people. He draws a most gloomy 
picture of the state of Germany before the war 
through the spread of commercialism and " sportism." 
All the evils of peace are summed up in the saying 
that " important elements of English culture had 
begun to make themselves widely felt." Hopeless 
attempts were made at salvation. The salvation 
of religion was tried (not by many), and it was found 
stale. The salvation of Socialism was tried, and 
it was found unprofitable. Professor Sombart was 
once a socialist, and he knows. "I, indeed," he 
says, " and a large number of people, and these 
not the worst, had before the war succumbed to 
a complete culture-pessimism. We had become firmly 
convinced that mankind was at an end, and that 
the remainder of its existence on earth would be an 
entirely unpleasant condition of vulgarisation of 
life in an ant heap, that the huckster spirit was every- 
where on the point of making itself felt, &c., &c." 

" And then the wonder happened," and Professor 
Sombart is lost in ecstasy and long sentences. " The 
war came ... a new spirit broke forth . . . 
yet not a new spirit ... it was the old German 
spirit . . . [the old potato spirit] . . . flame 
devouring flame . . . &c., &c." 

This exaltation of war and horror of peace lands 
the German fire-eater in a difficulty. The question 
has been put to him (it seems by his own countrymen 
— perhaps of a prophetic turn) : Would it not be 
better for our young heroes if they should suffer 



66 THE NEUTRALITY OF THE UNITED STATES IN 

defeat so as to have a long period of discipline for 
the next war, and so on ? 

The answer is that victory is necessary for a strong 
state. You cannot get proper miUtarism without 
strength, any more than you can get a proper moun- 
tain without size and height. " What happens to 
people void of state {i.e., a mountain of it) or with 
but a weak state we see clearly enough in the ' small ' 
nationalities of Europe." Yes, indeed. Then the 
preacher of heroism goes on : " We want to be 
idealists but not dreamers in the clouds. We wish 
to stand firm on earth and take as much of the sea 
and of the earth as we need for our existence and for our 
natural increase. We do not want anything more 
than this, but also we do not want anything less. 
Our kingdom is of this world. If we desire to remain 
a strong state we must conquer. A great victory 
will make it possible not to trouble any more about 
those who are around us. When the Clerman stands 
leaning on his mighty sword, clad in steel from his 
sole to his head, whatsoever will, may down below, 
dance around his feet, and the intellectuals and the 
learned men of England, France, and Russia, and 
Italy may rail at him and throw mud. But in his 
lofty repose he will not allow himself to be disturbed, 
and he will only reflect in the sense of his old ancestors 
in Europe : Oderint dum metuant.'' A little bit of 
old German would have been more stylish than a 
Latin tag, but the meaning is clear : it is the rest of 
the body of the mailed fist in a new suit of shining 
armour. 

This image of a steel clad mighty Germany naturally 



RELATION TO BRITISH AND GERMAN EMPIRES 67 

leads to a consideration of " other nations and our- 
selves." Here the main idea is that CTermany needs 
nothing whatever from other nations ; she is alto- 
gether superior in every part of national life and in any 
exchange gives more than she receives. Here are a 
few examples of German self-sufficiency, 

" All economic international relations are a neces- 
sary evil which we should endeavour to restrict as 
far as possible. The most pressing task after the 
war will be to secure for Germany the maximum of 
economic independence.'^ Then comes the turn of 
international law. This it is graciously allowed has 
in the past achieved nuich good, " and in future it 
may be allowed to develop undisturbed." In future 
— that is, we suppose, after the war. 

International socialism of the proletariate is shortly 
condemned as "a very grave evil : " " We must 
wait to see how the working classes on their return 
from the trenches will be cured of this malady." 

There remains cultural or spiritual internationalism, 
that is the relations between nations in the scientific, 
artistic, and social field, " Fortunately we Germans 
do not require anybody in matters of spirit or of 
culture. No nation in the world can give us anything 
worth mentioning in the field of science or technology, 
art or literature." 

It is rather an anti-climax to read that, after all, 
foreign nations may offer some things of spiritual 
value, but the situation is saved by " always excepting 
England, which does not produce anything of cultural 
value." This is praise indeed. 

There is a little comfort but not much in the last 



68 THE NEUTRALITY OF THE UNITED STATES IN 

bit of the international relations. " The idea that we 
are the chosen people imposes on us heavy duties. 
Above all, we must maintain ourselves as a strong 
nation. We are not out to conquer the world . . . 
what should we do with such indigestible bits in our 
stomach ? We do not desire to conquer peoples half 
civilised or in a state of nature in order to fill them 
with the German spirit. Such a Germanisation is not 
possible . . , . The great talent for civilisation which 
is praised in the English is nothing but an expression 
of spiritual poverty. Who could undertake the task 
of implanting German culture in other nations ? 
You cannot lay heroism like gas mains in any part 
of the world you choose. We Germans will always 
thus be — and rightly so — bad colonisers." The gas 
of heroism is difficult to lay on even in the trenches, 
and then only with a suitable wind. 

This comfortable doctrine that springs from the 
contempt of the German Colossus must not be relied 
on too much. " Should it be necessary to increase 
our territory we will take as much land as appears 
necessary. We shall also take all the strategical 
points that seem good enough, in order to maintain 
our impregnable strength. If it is of any use to our 
position of strength in the world we will establish 
stations for our fleet for exam/pie in Dover, Malta, 
Suez. Beyond this we will do nothing." But the 
"/or example " is ominous. 

Towards the end of his argument the Professor 
goes from rhapsody to rhapsody — from megalomania 
to megalomania. Here is a choice example : " No — 
we must purge from our souls the last fragments of 



RELATION TO BRITISH AND GERMAN EMPIRES 69 

the old ideal of a progressive development of humanity 
. . . The idea of humanity can only thus be under- 
stood in its deepest sense when it attains its highest 
and richest development in particular noble nations. 
These for the time being are the representatives of 
GocVs thought on earth. Such were the Jews, such 
were the Greeks. And the chosen people of these 
centuries is the German people. To show this is 
the purpose of this book. Now we understand why 
other people pursue us with their hatred. They 
do not understand us, but they are sensible of 
our enormous spiritual superiority. So the Jews 
were hated in antiquity because they were the repre- 
sentatives of God on earth," &c., &c. And only to 
think that we in England and America, when we 
tipped the German waiter or gave our smallest coin 
to the collector for the German band, never knew 
that we were tipping angels unawares. 

Professor Sombart is extremely verbose, and his 
thought is so emotional that with the best intentions 
it is difficult to condense it into an English 
form. 

To show the glory of war and the imbecility of 
peace one more sentence may be given. After a 
long array of authors who have praised militarism, 
which is meant to show that the author is in harmony 
with the best thought of Germany, we read : " The 
wretched book of the aged Kant on Everlasting Peace, 
in which it is not the great philosopher who speaks, 
but the private person, represents the only exception. 
Otherwise we have no knowledge of pacific utterances 
of representative Germans of any time. Such utter- 



70 THE NEUTRALITY OF THE UNITED STATES IN 

ances would indeed also represent a sin against the 
holy ghost of Germanism." 

It is difficult for any English-speaking person to 
take stuff of this kind seriously. And therein lies the 
danger. The book must be read as a whole to see 
the full bearing. In this chapter only some of the 
matter specially bearing on militarism has been 
extracted and condensed. The plan of the book is 
quite logical and the argument is developed in due 
order. It is not merely a collection of rhapsodies 
on war and Germanism. 

In the introduction Professor Sombart observes 
very truly that the present war, like the former great 
wars, is a contest of ideals, or, as he says, of faith. 
It is a contest between commercialism and heroism : 
traders (or hucksters) and heroes. The Germans, of 
course, are the heroes, and the Turks are ingenuously 
left out as taking part in a mere episode. The English 
are the traders -par excellence, the shopkeepers. 

The main idea of the book is to show that the 
opposition between the English and the German 
ideals — commercialism and heroism — is irreconcilable. 
The handling of what purports to be an account of 
English culture — its literature, history, philosophy, 
and every department of activity past and present — 
displays either an appalling lack of knowledge or an 
appalling lack of truth. The distortion is not even 
amusing. The praise of the Germans on the other 
hand, apart from the blasphemy as may be seen from 
the samples quoted already, would seem distinctly 
comic but for the horrible practical sequel to the 
German madness. It is to be hoped that in time this 



RELATION TO BRITISH AND GERMAN EMPIRES 71 

madness of Germany may pass as the madness of 
revolutionary France passed ; but until it does we 
can only say with Professor Sombart that " it may be 
hoped there will now be an end of all talk of the 
community of these two kindred nations — the English 
and the German. There is nothing more silly than 
this." Nothing. 

It may be said that the ravings of Professor Sombart 
do not fairly represent the German people. Judging 
by deeds, however, they are certainly much nearer 
the truth than the sweet reasonableness attributed 
to them by Mr. von Mach. 

In the meantime, in the conflict of evidences of 
opinion, and with the issue of a specially mild kind for 
the use of Americans, we must rely on the evidences 
of the war itself. The later German excesses bring 
us to the consideration of American interests. 



D* 2 



CHAPTER VI 

THE IMMEDIATE INTERESTS OF THE UNITED STATES ^ 

On the outbreak of the war the immediate interests 
of the United States seemed to admit of no doubt. 
These interests would clearly be best promoted by 
the maintenance of strict neutrality. 

It has always been the policy of the United States 
not to interfere in European quarrels. Similarly, 
the principle of non-intervention in the internal 
affairs of any independent foreign State has always 
been strictly interpreted, as is shown in the long- 
suffering of the anarchy of Mexico. A very practical 
proof of the reality of this policy of non-interference is 
found in the persistent neglect of military preparation. 
There is no provision for an expeditionary force, 
and without such a force the power of the Navy is 
limited. 

The composite character of the people of the United 
States clenched the idea of neutrality with a very 
practical reason. By the last Census (1910) it appears 
that the white population of foreign stock {i.e., 

1 On the distinction between national interests and national 
synipatliies see above, Chapter I. 



THE NEUTRALITY OF THE UNITED STATES 73 

foreign born or one or both parents foreign born) 
is over thirty-two milhons. Of this foreign stock, 
about one-third — say, eleven milHons — is from Ger- 
many and Austria-Hungary, and about one-third 
is from the British Isles and Canada. The German 
element is strong in wealth and political influence, 
and to judge by the samples of its journals in senti- 
ment is more Kaiserlich than the Kaiser. 

Besides those connected by blood relationship 
with the different belligerent nations, there are 
many also closely connected by commercial and 
financial ties. Some of these hyphenated financial 
interests are amongst the most important of the 
United States. 

It was obvious at once that the war would involve 
immense monetary losses to the nations actively 
concerned. Their trade would be crippled and their 
capital replaced by debt. The United States, on 
the other hand, as a neutral, would be likely to enjoy 
exceptional gains, as a buyer of bankrupt stock 
and a seller of the prime necessaries of life and of 
war at famine prices. In recent years the foreign 
trade of the United States has become of increasing 
importance, and the war promised openings for the 
capture of markets which the Germans had already 
taken from the British, As a result of the general 
financial disorganisation New York might hope, 
if neutrality were strictly preserved, to take the place 
of London as the clearing-house of the world. There 
is a glamour about foreign trade and the control of 
international money markets that appeals to the 
popular imagination in much the same way as the 



74 THE NEUTRALITY OF THE UNITED STATES IN 

barbaric pearl and gold of the gorgeous East used 
to appeal to our ancestors. " The United States 
the Greatest Trading Nation," " New York the 
World's Banker," would no doubt be most pleasing 
headlines. 

From the moral point of view the case for neu- 
trality seemed equally clear. To the average American, 
war is horrible. The doctrines of Bernhardi are 
repulsive ; a retrogression to barbarism and not 
an advance to a higher plane. This disgust with 
Bernhardi 's praise of war and the military virtues 
is so strong that Mr. von Macli, in his able presentation 
of the German case for the use of Americans, has 
taken pains in his introduction to repudiate Bern- 
hardi.^ " It will hardly be doubted that Bernhardi 
neither spoke for the Germans as such, nor that his 
book had any influence on the people as a whole." 
Unfortunately, since the outbreak of the war, Bern- 
hardi has been surpassed in violence in an enormous 
mass of German war literature — in journals, pam- 
phlets, and books — and " military culture " must be 
taken to be, for the present at any rate, the ideal of 
the " Germans as such." The actual progress of the 
present war has certainly confirmed the average 
American in his original opinion that war is horrible. 
War may be the lesser of evils ; war may promote 
some of the highest forms of self-sacrifice and duty ; 
war may foster some of the noblest virtues; these 
truths the Americans learned in their own Civil 
War, which is still a living memory ; but they 
learned also that war is lioirible. 
1 Op. cit., pp. 9-11. 



RELATION TO BRnlSH AND GERMAN EMPIRES 75 
Such being the state of affairs and of ophuons 
in the United States, it was phxinly the duty of tlie 
President to deeh^re a policy of neutrahty and to 
endeavour to follow out this policy with the utmost 
strictness and good faith. 

But although the immediate mterests of the 
United States pointed clearly to neutrahty the war 
had hardly begun when the rule of neutrahty pre- 
sented difficulties of iuterpretatio.1. Neutrahty itself 
incurs obligations and also claims rights. ihe 
United States, as the greatest of neutrals, is concerned 
to maintain a strict interpretation both of the rights 
and the obligations. This attitude is the natural 
counterpart of the policy of non-interventioii^ Ihe 
position of the United States as a great pacihc and 
Ln-interventionist nation would be intolerable if 
the military nations presumed to take advantage 
of this pacifism in their own interests. 

So important is this championship of neutmlity 
that it may be said to form an essential part of the 
national interests of the United States 

But the position of champion neutral thus assumed, 
though obviously just in principle, is beset with the 
gravest difficulties in practice. 

It is to the interest of the United States-in he 
strictest interpretation of interest^that the accepted 
niles of international law should be observed by the 
belligerents, and thereby the system of international 
law itself strengthened and consolidated. 

For. unfortmrately, what is called international 
law is in strictness only international morality. 
Suppose some powerful nation changes its view on 



76 THE NEUTRALITY OF THE UNITED STATES IN 

the accepted moral law, what is to be done ? Who is 
to decide if the change of view is justified by the plea 
of national safety or military exigency ? Who is 
to inflict the penalty, if any ? 

It cannot be expected that the United States 
(without an army) should rush in to separate the 
combatants and enforce the rules of fair fighting 
or the observance of treaties and agreements which 
cannot be considered as directly affecting American 
interests in the more narrow sense of the term. In 
some part of the world there is always being committed 
some crime against international law, but the United 
States cannot set up to be the general judge and 
policeman for the whole world. Don Quixote himself 
might have quailed before such a task. 

Nor can the .interference of the United States 
be determined simply by the magnitude of the offence 
or the estimate of its moral turpitude. 

" It will never be possible in any war to commit 
a clearer breach of international morality than that 
committed by Germany in the invasion of Belgium." 
In these words ex-President Roosevelt has expressed 
the opinion of the civilised world. But it is by no 
means clear from the indignant sermon preached 
from this text that even he would think the devas- 
tation of Belgium in itself made the military inter- 
vention of the United States inevitable. 

It is to be hoped that one result of the present war 
will be to stop such misconduct for the future ; but 
such, alas ! was also the pious hope of the latest Hague 
Conferences. The world still waits for the greatest 
discovery in practical morality — namely, the imposi- 



RELATION TO BRITISH x\ND GERMAN EMPIRES ^'j 

tion of effective penalties for the breach of inter- 
national law — effective, that is to say, as preventive. 
In the meantime, however, even the champion 
nation of neutrality and of international law cannot 
be expected to go to war simply to enforce inter- 
national morality in general. 

But the case is at once altered as soon as any 
infringement of accepted international law affects 
not only third parties, but the United States itself. 
Under present conditions the only way in which 
international law can be maintained and advanced 
is if every particular nation, so far as lies in its power, 
defends its own interests against any breach. 

Belgium set an example that ought to be an ever- 
lasting landmark in the advancement of international 
law. For the present it is the worst case on record 
of the violation of that law. Belgium was offered 
the German guarantee of integrity and compensation 
for disturbance after the war if only she would permit 
the passage of German troops. A refusal was to 
be met by war. Belgium would not accept this 
interference with her political independence. Yet 
Germany had promised that Belgium should suffer 
no material injury if she yielded. Belgium has 
suffered martyrdom for a word — for an idea — the 
idea of political independence. The martyrdom of 
Belgium will be wasted unless as a consequence the 
law of nations is put on a more solid foundation, 
and unless a recurrence of such violation is prevented. 
In the meantime it is more than ever necessary 
that no further violation of accepted law should be 
suffered by the other neutral nations. It follows 



78 THE NEUTRALITY OF THE UNITED STATES IN 

that the champion of neutrahty ought to guard with 
the utmost jealousy any interference with its own 
interests as determined by international law. Any 
sacrifice of political independence at the present 
juncture is so far a reversion to barbarism. 

It is, of course, a matter for the United States 
to determine how far in fact or in law there is a 
violation of its interests, and to judge of the inadequacy 
of any explanation or redress that may be oftered. 

It is worth while, however, to consider, by way of 
illustration of the general argument, what is meant 
by the interests of the United States apart from the 
general sympathy with law and humanity. We may 
begin with the lowest interests — that is to say, the 
lowest in the moral scale that is still commonly 
adopted by the nations — namely, the commercial 
interests. The commerce of the United States is 
carried on under the accepted rules of international law. 
The mere announcement through the usual diplomatic 
channels by some other nation of its intention to 
break this law makes no difference whatever to the 
rights of the United States. The offending nation 
may plead self-defence or military necessity, but 
the very object of international law is to restrain 
the self-interest of nations. If the intention to 
break the law is not conveyed through the usual 
diplomatic channels, where it might well be checked 
in transit, but is only advertised in the newspapers, 
the offence is much aggravated. 

When the breach of the law is specially aimed 
against shipping it reaches the highest point of 
audacity. A ship is thought to be as inviolal 



RELATION TO BRITISH AND GERMAN EMPIRES 79 

as a citizen ; in all languages a ship is spoken of as 
a living thing, and to sink a ship unlawfully is, so 
to speak, murder or culpable homicide, as the case 
may be. Some of the greatest wars have arisen 
in connection with the rights of shipping and the 
freedom of the seas. 

If, however, the rights of trade and of certain 
kinds of property are regarded as of so much import- 
ance, a fortiori any offence against international 
law involving the lives of the citizens cannot be 
passed over without a sacrifice of the fundamental 
idea of political independence. The case of the 
Lusitania is very dift'erent from that of Belgium so 
far as it affects the interests of the United States. 
The horror of Belgium was greater, but it was not 
the property or lives of American citizens that was 
threatened. Although the Lusitania was a British 
ship and alleged to carry contraband, its destruction 
against the rules of international law, with the 
consequent loss of American lives, is an infringement 
of that elementary security that is the foundation 
of political society. 

On the right of the United States to demand ex- 
planation and redress there can be no question, 
as was made perfectly clear in the first Presidential 
Note. 

But in the matter of peace and war the question 
of right is not everything ; there is also the question 
of expediency. The distinction was admirably put 
by Canning in a speech on the Spanish question (1823). 
" Any question of war involves not only a question of 
right, not only a question of justice, but also a question 



8o THE NEUTRALITY OF THE UNITED STATES IN 

of expediency. Before any Government goes to war 
it ought to be convinced not only that it has just cause 
for war, but that there is something which renders 
war its duty ; a duty compounded of two con- 
siderations — the first what the country may owe to 
others ; the second what she owes to herself." 

The primary duty of the United States to other 
nations, if the foregoing argument is accepted, is to 
insist that so far as she is concerned no violation of 
international law will be permitted. The champion 
of neutrality must at least defend the rights of neutrals 
in its own case. 

The duty of the United States to herself must 
depend on the view that is taken of her own interests. 
As already shown, the immediate interests are in 
neutrality, but unless the policy of a country is to be 
governed merely by the opportunism of the moment, 
regard must be paid to ulterior interests and to the 
great principles which are at the basis of the 
constitution and life of the State. 

The people of the United States are not governed 
simply by monetary calculations. Fifty years ago 
they submitted not merely to war, but to civil war 
of the most dreadful kind. What for ? To deter- 
mine the meaning of the word liberty. The liberty 
of the North fought against the liberty of the South— 
the higher liberty against the lower. Who could 
formulate in terms of money the points at issue ? 

And at the present crisis in the history of the world 
the duty of the United States to herself cannot be 
estimated simply in the effects on opulence, and still 
less by that part of opulence that arises from foreign 



RELATION TO BRITISH AND GERMAN EMPIRES 8i 

trade and dealing in money. It may well turn out 
that this wider view of interests may show that the 
duty to self and the duty to other nations coincide 
to a great extent, and may involve a reconsideration 
of the policy of passive acceptance of the great 
German Revolution. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE ULTERIOR INTERESTS OF THE UNITED STATES. 

At the outbreak of the war it was commonly 
beHeved in this country that the German nation had 
been led away by the Emperor, and the Emperor by 
a military clique. The English-speaking races take 
it as an axiom that you cannot bring an indictment 
against a nation. Most people in Britain believed 
that as soon as the Emperor had been found out, and 
even if victory was delayed beyond the appointed day, 
there would be in Germany revolution and disruption. 

The course of the war and the publication in 
Germany of masses of war literature have shown that 
these ideas were the reverse of the truth. The 
Emperor is the best beloved man in Germany because 
he best represents the national ideals. 

" It is no longer possible," says Mr. von Mach, 
" to speak of a clique as in command of the Govern- 
ment. The communal and individual life of Germany 
is democratic, and the heads of departments are 
drawn from all classes."^ The Emperor is well 
spoken of at home, and is beloved by his people, 

^ Op. cit., p. 38. 
82 



THE NEUTRALITY OF THE UNITED STATES 83 

" not because he is autocratic, but because his aims 
throughout his reign have been the anns ot the 
healthy pulsating lite of Germany-peace and pro- 
gress "1 The Germanic ideas of peace and progress 
have received very full illumination, not only fi^om 
the war literature, but from the war practice, ihe 
kind of peace is certainly the kind that promotes 
progress ; but the progress that is sought after is the 
procrress of the German Empire regardless ot the 
rights of other nations. It is not the German Emperor 
only who wants a place in the sun and is not satished 
with peaceful penetration. The whole nation has 
been seized with the lust for military domimon. 

In the same way it is not only by the military caste 
that war has been glorified. The whole nation has 
been taught to believe that the virtues ot war are 
nobler than the virtues of peace. The hatred ot 
England is not due simply to her unexpected mtei-- 
vention in the war, but to the feeling that English 
ideas are most opposed to " military culture. Not 
only is war glorified, but military necessity or advan- 
tage is made the final test of justice. " War is war 
is not merely the excuse of the ruthless soldier, but 
IS accepted by practically all the leaders of thought 
in Germany as a sufficient excuse for the sufferings 
of Belgium; it is a pity that in war the innocent 
must suffer with the guilty— that is all.^ 

^^oLZ, 1914, Professors Yves Guyot and Daniel Bdlet 
addressed a letter to Professor Lujo Brentano in which the.v 
ex r^^^^^^^^^^^ their surprise that, his name should have been found 
expressecl ti 1 manifesto of the nniety-three 

'^::^Z^^^oie^o. Brentano has been known these 



84 THE NEUTRALITY OF THE UNITED STATES IN 

It is only with the greatest reluctance that the' 
British people have been forced to the conclusion by 
overwhelming evidence that the (lerman nation is 
throughout permeated with these ideas of " military 
culture " and of the morality of miglit. 

It is an old saying tliat England is " a nation of 
shopkeepers." The expression was used by Adam 
Smith, and is, at any rate, good enough to be opposed 
to " the nation of heroes." But, whatever words of 
praise or dispraise are employed, there can be no 
question that the ideas at the basis of German military 
culture and hero-worship are exactly the opposite 
of the great ideas under which the British Empire 
has grown up and been extended over so wide an 
area.^ 

And the key to the present argument is that it is 
precisely these same ideas which have dominated 

forty years as one of tlie most able and sympathetic writers on 
English labour questions. His work on the origins of English 
Trade Unions was literally a path-breaker. The present writer 
for the first book he ever published (1877) took for a motto 
Brentano's dictum that "die Lohnjrage ist eine Kuliurjrage'''' — the 
wages question is a question of culture. Inter alia in their letter 
the French Professors call attention to the frightfulness in 
Belgium as attested by witnesses from the United States. In his 
reply Professor Brentano says it is one of the saddest things in 
war that there are always innocent who suffer with the guilty, and 
by way of consolation adds that the curse will fall on those who 
have provoked so frightful a war. Apparently Professor Brentano 
believed that Germany was the victim of an unprovoked and 
long-prepared -for attack. If this is still his bond fide belief it 
shows how much the German people were deceived. But what- 
ever their ideas of the origins of the war their approval of its 
conduct on land and sea (witness the joy over the Lusitania) 
seems to show that for the time at any rate the moral sense of the 
people has been blunted. 
1 See above, Chapter III. 



RELATION TO BRITISH AND GERMAN EMPIRES 85 

the growth of the United States, and with the vigour 
natural to a young nation unfettered by ancient 
history and with boundless territory have been pushed 
farther than in the old country. 

If the opposition between the German and the 
British ideals is marked, the opposition is still stronger 
between German ideals and the ideals of the United 
States. 

What, then, are these great ideas which dominate 
British civilisation, and are still stronger, because ]ess 
restricted in their unfolding, in the United States ? 
What are these great ideas which are so opposed to 
the ideas of the German Revolution ? 

The most persistent and forceful of them all is 
liberty. Liberty must always mean liberty under the 
law, but in the British and the American nations the 
ideal is a maximum of freedom with a minimum of 
coercion and regulation. In Germany, on the other 
hand, the idea has been fostered that state regula- 
tion is better than private judgment, and that 
obedience is better than liberty. In the English- 
speaking nations the great principle of equality before 
the law is carried out to the full extent. With them 
the law is no respecter of persons. In Germany, 
even in peace, ideas of military privilege offend 
against this principle, and in war military privilege 
is supreme.^ 

1 List observed that in no European country is the institution 
of an aristocracy more judiciously designed than in Englancl, 
where the nobility attract to their body the elite of the common- 
alty, and on the other hand tlirow back into the commonalty the 
si.irplus progeny of the aristocracy. He especially praises the 
restriction of titles of nobility to one representative of a family. In 



86 THE NEUTRALITY OF THE UNITED STATES IN 

As regards constitutional liberties, there is very 
little difference between the United Kingdom and the 
United States, although in names and in theory the 
latter is ostensibly the more advanced. The retention 
of the hereditary principle in the British Empire is 
rather a formal than a material difference. 

In the German Empire, on the other hand, the 
Emperor is not, in the British sense of the term, a 
constitutional monarch. His personal power is real 
and great, alike in the choice of Ministers, in the 
determination of foreign policy, and in the conduct of 
war. How the German people can submit to a non- 
constitutional Government is always one of the 
wonders of the world to the British mind. The present 
German Emperor believes in his divine right. The 
last King of England who believed in his divine right 
was executed more than two and a half centuries 
ago. 

In the German system of local government the 
permanent State official holds a dominant position. 
The Government expert is everywhere. In this 
country, on the other hand, as Mr. Dawson observes 
in his great woi'k on Municipal Life and Goverfiment 
m Germany, " most Englishmen at heart prefer the 
worst of amateurs to the best of experts, and would 

Germany the opposite system prevails, and the ruling caste, 
especially in the army, is " noble " by birth. The privileges of 
the army and the bureaucracy are thus to a great extent birth 
privileges. It is worth noting that in his diatribes against the 
English shopkeepers Professor Sombart looks on the interaction of 
the aristocracy and the commonalty which was so highly praised 
by List as one of the cavises of the national decay. What do the 
German socialists think of the German theory of aristocracy ? 



RELATION TO BRITISH AND GERMAN EMPIRES Sy 

rather be wrong with the one than right with the 
other." But this greater German efficiency is bought 
at the cost of a depression of individual character 
and of the essentials of liberty that are the life and 
soul of the English-speaking nations. In time of 
war this acquired docility of the German has its 
advantages, at least in its earlier stages. It has its 
advantages in regulating the consumption of food 
and the provision of military requisites. But the 
point is not as to which system gives the best military 
results for the time being, but whether British free- 
dom or German obedience is most in accord with 
American ideals. 

In comparing " the shopkeeper " with " the hero," 
the most striking and obvious difference is in the 
provision for military requirements. The British 
ideal is to use the minimum of military power that is 
necessary to support the defence of the Empire. The 
Germanic idea is to organise the Empire in such a 
way as to promote the highest military power possible. 
It is not necessary to point out that in the United 
States the non-military idea has been carried to an 
extreme. Even the United States, however, in recent 
years has found it desirable to keep up an effective 
Navy. In the British Empire the proximity of the 
British Isles to Europe and the vast extent of the 
British dominions make a strong Navy a necessity. 
But relatively to our national obligations when the 
present war broke out we were only possessed of the 
minimum military power requisite for our defence. 
Mr. von Mach, in his chapter on " Militarism," tries to 
show that militarism prevails to a greater extent 



88 THE NEUTRALITY OF THE UNITED STATES IN 

in the United Kingdom than in Germany. This 
extraordinary paradox is supported by taking the 
amount of money spent by the United Kingdom on 
the Army and Navy per head of population, and 
comparing the amount per head of Germany. 
" Figured jper capita, ^^ he says, " the United Kingdom 
in 1911 was spending about 60 per cent, more than 
Germany." Therefore, apparently the United King- 
dom is afflicted with militarism more than half as 
much again as Germany. 

Unfortunately for this conclusion it is forgotten 
that the population of the United Kingdom is only 
about one-tenth of the population of the British 
Empire, and the main burden of the defence of the 
Empire is thrown on Britain. 

In British policy the principle of non-interference 
with the internal affairs of foreign states has long 
been the accepted rule, and in the United States the 
rule has again been carried to an extreme. 

With Germany, on the other hand, the degree of 
interference appears to be only limited by the chance 
of success. 

With regard to external relations with foreign 
countries, the present war has shown that, whilst 
Britain made the observance of treaty obligations the 
first consideration, Germany began by an official 
repudiation of international law. " We have been 
forced into a state of self-defence, and the necessity 
of self-defence knows no other law. Our troops have 
occupied Luxemburg, and have perhaps already been 
obliged to enter Belgian territory. That is against 
the rules of international law." Thus spake the 



Hi 



RELATION TO BRITISH AND GERMAN EMPIRES 89 

German Chancellor ; and the appalling devastation 
of Belgium has made his words immortal. A belated 
attempt was made to explain away the speech, but 
the explanation was more than neutralised by a series 
of other violations of international law, culminating 
(for the time) in the sinking of the Lusitania. 

Only on one other point need the comparison of 
national ideals be extended. One of the great ideas 
common to British and American policy is the idea of 
humanity. The evidence is overwhelming that in the 
conduct of the present war Germany has transgressed 
the moral laws of humanity to an incredible extent. 

Such, in brief outline, are the chief features of the 
British and of the German ideas of government as 
compared and contrasted with those of the United 
States. To the impartial observer in the United 
States we may say, " Look on this picture and on 
that, and see which is most like your own country — 
which answers best to the ideals by which your 
national policy is guided ? On which side will you 
throw the weight of your moral approval ? " 

The impartial observer may perhaps hesitate 
and say that the choice between ideals of Empire 
is none of his business. The United States as a 
nation, he may urge, is not only non-military but 
non-imperial. The American Republican does not 
like the word empire, even when it is joined with 
the word liberty. 

But if he does not like the idea of empire with 
liberty, how would he like the idea of empire without 
hberty ? The ideal of government in the British 
Empire, as in the Motherland, is the maximum of 



Qo THE NEUTRALITY OF THE UNITED STATES IN 

liberty that is consistent with the development of 
each part and the security of the whole. This ideal 
had been realised in practice to an extraordinary 
degree, as was shown in a marvellous manner 
on the outbreak of the war. What Germany had 
expected and hoped for, and paid for, was an outburst 
of rebellions against the British yoke, and a rush to 
the friendship and protection of Germany. In the 
words of the great adopted poet of Germany the 
subject races of Britain were to say, " Now is the 
winter of our discontent made glorious summer by 

this sun of ! " What is the missing word ? Who 

except a Prussian would venture to say — Prussia ? 

The latest German suggestion is that the United 
States has more to fear from the Marinismus of 
England than from the Militarismus of Germany. 
For a hundred years past the United States has had 
nothing to complain of from British naval power ; 
what Germany means by the freedom of the seas 
may be conjectured from the use of her submarines. 

If by any disaster the outcome of the present war 
were altogether favourable to Germany, and if to 
the military power of Germany were added the power 
of the sea, the world dominion of Germany would 
be unquestioned for many generations. 

That is the real issue of the war. Could the United 
States contemplate with equanimity such an accession 
of power by Germany ? Could the United States 
afford to see the British Empire go under, and a Ger- 
man Empire on even a larger scale take its place ? 

What are the real ulterior interests of the United 
States in this world struggle ? Surely the interests 



RELATION TO BRITISH AND GERMAN EMPIRES 91 

that are most in accord with the national sympathies 
and ideals : liberty, justice, and humanity. In 
this sense it is not the chief interest of the United 
States to pocket the money gains of neutrality from 
the expansion of foreign trade. It is not her chief 
interest to see in her own territories the greatest 
number of people producing and consuming the 
greatest amount of material wealth, regardless of the 
rest of the world. Non-intervention ' may be good, 
non-militarism may be good, but the United States 
cannot live in isolation.^ And it is not to the interest 
of the United States that international law, which 
has grown up with the growth of civilisation, should 
be uprooted by military force, and that the ideals 
of Western freedom should be displaced by the ideals 
of German discipline. 

By all means if possible let the United States 
avoid war — ^by all means possible unless war becomes 
her duty — " a duty," again to recall the words in 
which Canning expressed the general moral judgment 
nearly a hundred years ago — " a duty compounded 
of two considerations : the first what the country 

1 In the final chapter of my Principles of Political Economy 
(VoL III., chapter 20), in disciissing the relations of Political 
Economy to Cliristianity, the following passage (written in 1901), 
seems apposite to the present argument : " Take a test case : 
May a Christian become a soldier ? At first sight killing and 
maiming men seems accursed — a thing to be avoided at the risk 
of one's own life. But the question arises : Will not war bo 
infinitely worse if left to unbelievers ? Has not warfare been 
softened by even the partial acceptance of Cliristian prin- 
ciples ? ... It is not simply by refvising to enlist as a soldier 
that the Cliristian will best repress and restrain war, any more 
than by refusing to become a magistrate he will repress crime. 
War in the ideal is only part of the administration of justice." 



92 THE NEUTRALITY (3F THE UNITED STATES 

may owe to others ; the second what she owes to 
herself." 

What she owes to herself it is for herself alone to 
decide. What she owes to others is to support, 
so far as her duty to herself will permit, the law of 
nations as against the arbitrary violation by military 
power. 



PRINTED IN GRKAT BHITAIN BY R. CLAY AND SONS, LTD., 
BRUNSWICK STREET. STAMFORD STREET, S.E., AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK. 



^-v»llv>l\COO 



020 914 099 8|| 

By Professor J. SHIELD NICHOLSON 



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